MASTER MINDS 



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COMMONWEAL 




PERCY H. EP 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Master Minds at the 

Commonwealth's 

Heart 



By 

Percy H. Epler 

Joint Author of Yale Addresses on "The Personality of Christ,' 

Author of "The Beatitude of Progress," 

Magazine Articles, etc. 



F. S. Blanchard & Co., Pui/isbers 

Worcester, Massachusetts 

1909 



Copyright, 1909, by 
F. S. Blanchard & Co. 



©CI. A 2533 70 



IN MEMORY OF 

MY FATHER, AND TO MY MOTHER 

WHOM HE HAS LEFT, 

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

BY ONE 

WHOSE EYES ARE MORE 

AND MORE OPENED, 

AS DISTANCE INCREASES THE PERSPECTIVE, 

TO THE 

SACRED DEPTHS OF THEIR 

PARENTAL LOVE AND SACRIFICE. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Foreword 5 

Artemas Ward — First Commander-in-chief of the American 
Revolution, Victor of the Evacuation of Boston, and Hero 

of Shays' Rebellion 9 

Eli Whitney — Inventor of the Cotton-gin .... 57 

Thomas Blanchard and other inventors ... 78 

Elias Howe — Inventor of the Sewing-machine ... 78 

William Morton — The Conqueror of Pain .... 89 

Dorothy Lynde Dix — Redemptress of the World's Insane . 119 

Clara Barton— Founder of the Red Cross in America . 149 

George Bancroft — Historian of the United States . . . 189 

John Bartholomew Gough— Greatest Apostle of Temperance 217 

George Frisbie Hoar— An American Ideal Statesman . 247 

Luther Burbank— Discoverer of a New Plant World . . 285 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Opp. Page 

Ancient Kitchen of the Ward Homestead with Door and 

Knocker 15 

Watching the Battle of Bunker Hill 23 

Portrait of General Artemas Ward 45 

Bevolutionary Homestead of General Artemas Ward . . 54 

Birthplace of Eli Whitney 58 

Portrait of Eh Whitney 70 

Portrait of Thomas Blanchard 74 

Birthplace of Elias Howe 78 

Portrait of Elias Howe 86 

The Discovery of Ether as an Anaesthetic 91 

Portrait of Dr. William Morton 105 

Portrait of Dorothy Lynde Dix 119 

Clara Barton's Birthplace and Present Summer Home at 

Oxford 150 

Portrait of Clara Barton 157 

Portrait of George Bancroft 189 

Bancroft's Birthplace 192 

Portraits of John Bartholomew Gough . . . . 217 

Reproduction of Painting of John B. Gough .... 245 

Portrait of George Frisbie Hoar 247 

A Presidential Party at Senator George Frisbie Hoar's Residence 273 

Portrait of Luther Burbank 285 

Birthplace of Luther Burbank and his Cottage at Santa Rosa, 

California 296 

Cactus— Before and After 307 



FOREWORD 



In writing a collective biography of ten great lives in the 
zone of inventive genius presented in such a book as "Master 
Minds at the Commonwealth's Heart," the danger of origi- 
nality is as great as the danger of merely reproducing 
recounted facts from others. Defects from each of these 
qualities of the biographer no doubt abound, yet not inten- 
tionally. So far as I have sought originality, it has been 
by a diligent study of each life and time to get a first-hand 
consciousness of the animating purpose of the life and re- 
immerse the life story anew in that. So far as I have 
clung to lines presented by other biographers, it lias been 
to true the account to facts, in doing which escape from 
hitherto admirable biographies, long and short, is well 
nigh impossible. 

Not relinquishing the hope of some original presentation 
through the seizing of each life's purpose amid the detail 
and making it stand out in its essentials, I yet naturally 
have found it impossible to get clear away from the splen- 
did work of scores of magazine writers and monographers 
before and after the Civil War, and from the following 
authoritative and standard biographies: "The Life of Dor- 
othea Dix," Tiffany; "Trials of a Public Benefactor," 
N. P. Bice; "The Story of the Bed Cross," "The Story of 
My Childhood," etc., Clara Barton; John Bartholomew 
Gough's "Autobiography," "Platform Echoes," "Sun- 
light and Shadow," etc.; "Life and Letters of George Ban- 



FOREWORD 

croft," 2 vols., M. A. DeWolf Howe; George Frisbie Hoar's 
"Autobiography of Seventy Years," 2 vols.; "New Crea- 
tions in Plant Life," W. S. Harwood. 

Especially does the author acknowledge the courteous 
and unfailing help of these descendants of master minds or 
originals themselves, in granting him access to unprinted 
sources, photographs, daguerreotypes, etc.: the late Miss 
Harriet Ward and Miss Clara Denny Ward of Shrews- 
bury, and other members of the Ward family; Hon. Eli 
Whitney, grandson of the inventor; Miss Clara Barton 
and her secretary, Dr. J. B. Hubbell; Mrs. Charles Reed, 
niece of John B. Gough; the descendants and friends of 
Elias Howe at Spencer; Dr. William Morton of New York, 
the son of the discoverer; Miss Mary Hoar, daughter of 
Senator Hoar; Luther Burbank and his sister, Mrs. Bee- 
son. These once, and frequently more than mice, revised and 
corrected the copy, occasionally inserting a luminous touch. 

Finally well-informed men, themselves authors of note, 
like Professor Albert Buslmell Hart of Harvard University 
or Charles Allen Dinsmore, or eye-witnesses and friends of 
the great men of the Commonwealth, like Hon. A. S. Roe 
and ex-Librarian S. S. Green of Worcester, have read all 
or part of the monographs and granted their kindly criti- 
cism. 

I present these ten lives in a group with a purpose. For 
zones of genius have always held their peculiar place 
in the history of humanity. Master minds, isolated as 
they may be in their originality, do not exist alone. 
Others living near catch the breath of their inspiration, 
and though proceeding perhaps along altogether different 
paths, are animated to achieve equally great master-pieces. 
The contagiousness of genius might be proved, had we time, 
by a biographical map of the world's great genius groups. 



FOREWORD 

We have here to view but one. 1 While individually its 
figures have been too frequently forgotten or obscured, it 
has never been in any case viewed as a group originating 
from one centre. But it is a mighty group nevertheless. 
It is more than a school of genius. We speak of the 
Concord School, and properly. They were writers, authors, 
dreamers. But these in the Worcester zone of genius are 
not only writers and dreamers, but founders, creators, in- 
ventors, discoverers, "doers of the word and not 'writers' 
only," and in this sense they are a greater zone of genius 
than tlvat at Concord. 

General Artemas Ward, First Commander-in-chief of 
the American Revolution; Eli Whitney, Inventor of the 
Cotton-gin; Elias Howe, Inventor of the Sewing-machine ; 
Dr. William Morton, "Conqueror of Pain;" Dorothy Lynde 
Dix, Redemptress of the World's Insane; Clara Barton, 
Founder of the Red Cross in America; George Bancroft, 
Historian of the United States; John Bartholomew Gough, 
Greatest Apostle of Temperance; George Frisbie Hoar, 
an American Ideal Statesman; Luther Burbank, Discoverer 
of a New Plant World! — Geniuses are these, small, perhaps, 
if you bound them by their starting-point, the hill-crowned 
region of Worcester. But they are mighty when you see 
them radiate the globe. PERCY H EPLER 

Worcester, September 10th, 1909. 



iHad the author projected a history of Worcester, there have been 
other residents of Worcester and of the county of Worcester, of na- 
tional reputation whose sketches might well have been given, such as 
Isaiah Thomas, and the first Levi Lincoln, and Governor Davis, and 
others in the past; Andrew H. Green in the present; and still others 
equally great who did not start here, but who for a time were resi- 
dents of Worcester, such as Edward Everett Hale. But such is not 
the object of the book as it is to deal with ten international figures 
who have been distinctly creators, founders, discoverers or inventors. 



ARTEMAS WARD 

FIRST COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 

VICTOR OF THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON, AND HERO 

OF SHAYS' REBELLION 1 

THE earliest chapter of the American Revolution we 
may realize afresh by reading the letters in an an- 
cient trunk over which, in the old colonial home- 
stead at Shrewsbury', General Artemas Ward's tall clock 
is still telling the moons and tick-tocking the generations 
away. 

For here are writings whose broken seals disclose the 
first secrets of the conflict in the handwriting of the 
fathers of the Revolution, in the handwriting of Washing- 
ton and his generals, in the handwriting of the creators of 
the Constitution, and sometimes, as in the following, in the 
handwriting of an intercepted message of the enemy. 

Just here breaks upon the scene the secret forming of the 
first minute-men. There vibrates throughout the qui vive 
that pulsated about the storm-centre at Concord. Con- 
sternation whispers its breath and betrays its shock at the 
rupture between royalist and American, brother and 
brother, comrade and comrade, neighbor and neighbor, 
friend and friend. Here is exposed the ominous separa- 



lApril 20th, 1908, as the Patriots' Day address in Boston at 
the celebration of Patriots' Day by the Sons of the Colonial Wars 
of Massachusetts, the author first presented this monograph on 
General Ward by invitation of Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of 
Harvard University and the Governor of the Sons of the Colonial 
Wars. 



10 MASTER MINDS 

tion of powder-stores from the King's powder-houses to 
the powder-houses of the patriots. Here is thrust iu the 
royalist counter-stroke of Governor Gage's proclamation 
and the threat that every rebel taken in arms would hang. 

In the captured missive from Cambridge, August 29th, 
1774 1 — 

Mr. Brattle presents his duty to His Excellency Governor Gage; 
he apprehends it is his duty to acquaint His Excellency from time 
to time with everything he hears and knows to be true and of 
importance in these troublous times. Captain Minot of Concord, 
a very worthy man, this minute informed Mr. Brattle that there 
had been repeatedly made pressing applications to him to warn 
his company to meet at one minute's warning, equipped with arms 
and ammunition according to laws he had constantly denied them; 
adding, if he did not gratify them, he should be constrained to 
quit his farm and town. Mr. Brattle told him he had better do 
that than lose his life and be hanged for a rebel. 

This morning the Selectmen of Medford came and received their 
town stock of powder which was in the arsenal on Quarry Hill. 
So there is now there in the King's powder-house only which 
shall remain there as a sacred deposition till ordered out by the 
Captain General. 

The facts in this letter exposed not only the patriots' 
withdrawal of powder, but actuated the first attempt of 
General Gage to disarm the people by securing the powder- 
stores and cannon of the colony. 

WARD WITHSTANDS THE KING'S GOVERNOR 

Amongst the first patriots to voice their rights against 
British encroachment of liberties and against arbitrary 
power was Artemas "Ward. 

Original copies of the royal Governor's official summons 
to council still lie in a packet in the ancient trunk, and 



iFrom a manuscript at the Ward homestead. 



ARTE MAS WARD 11 

repeatedly bear to Ward this commandatory but reluctant 
message : 

Sir: His Excellency the Governor directs a general council to 
be held at the Council Chamber in Boston on Wednesday, the 
11th instant, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, and expects your 
attendance accordingly. 

This summons was not issued with grace by the royal 
Governor, but at the dictation of a popular demand he 
dared not resist. 

To represent their stand against a high-handed infringe- 
ment of their rights and liberties, nine years before Mr. 
Brattle's letter and for nearly ten years previous to the 
Revolution, the Massachusetts men insisted upon the pres- 
ence of Artemas Ward in the royal council. The Governor 
objected and negatived their choice* — an evidence of the 
greatness of Ward's weight as a patriot. 

In this full decade before the events of '76, among the 
pre-revolutionary collisions constantly occurring, one col- 
lision took place in June, 1766, at Shrewsbury Green, with 
King George's Governor, Francis Bernard. 

This June day Artemas Ward was engaged after the 
manner of his time in doing his part towards the rebuilding 
of the Shrewsbury Meeting-house. Like the rest of his 
line, who did the same from the time Deacon Ward landed 
in the sixteen hundreds, Ward took the lead in the Pilgrim 
Church and in all that it meant to America, particularly in 
fostering in the Colonies the idea of freedom and individual 
liberty which had been always tabernacled in its ark. 

Suddenly Ward's superintendence of the white church's 
reconstruction was interrupted by a dash of a mounted 
red-coat, who swirled out of the dust of the Boston turn- 
pike. It was the agent of His Majesty's Governor at Bos- 
ton, and he did not rein the wheeling nag till he brought it 



12 MASTER MINDS 

up full before Artemas Ward himself, to thrust before him 
the order whose seal he at once broke thus to read aloud: 

Boston, June 30, 1766. 
To Artemas Ward, Esquire. 

Sir: I am ordered by the Governor to signify to you that it has 
been thought fit to supersede your commission of Colonel in the 
regiment of militia lying in part in the County of Worcester and 
partly in the County of Middlesex, and your said commission is 
superseded accordingly. 

I am, sir, 
Your most obt and humble servant, 

Jno. Cotton, Deputy Secretary. 

"Give my compliments to the Governor and say to him 
that I consider myself twice honored, but more in being 
superseded than in being commissioned, and (holding up 
the letter) that I thank him for this, since the motive that 
dictated it is evidence that I am what he is not, a friend to 
my country!" 

"Colonel Ward forever!" shouted the fast-grown crowd 
as the cloyed and chesty royalist dug his spurs into his 
horse 's flanks and shot out of view back to Boston. 

The Governor could revoke the commission, but he could 
not stifle the breath of liberty nor shut Ward out of the 
Governor's own royal council, to which, against the Gov- 
ernor's negative, the patriot Colonists, as we have seen, 
elected him in 1768, notwithstanding even then threats of 
subjection by the King's soldiers. 

WARD IN THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS 

There was another thing Ward carried with him besides 
the breath of liberty which the Governor could not revoke. 
It was, as with Washington, a knowledge of war, 
which he had learned under the King's generals in 
the French and Indian fights in the wilderness. In 



ARTEMAS WARD 13 

1755-1758 such was his innate martial mettle that, 
like over one third of the able-bodied youth of Massa- 
chusetts, with Colonel "Williams' regiment of foot, 
he left the feathered nest of a country seat and the golden 
spoon of a proud family 1 to risk life and limb in the 
battles in the wilds of the north. Like Washington under 
Braddock, under General Abercrombie, Lord Howe and 
Williams, he was here first to follow the gleam and show 
the mettle of the man in a school of war the teachings of 
which he was so soon to turn back against his English 
tutors in the fierce reflex of Revolution. 

The very diary in which on page after page he wrote 
down each day his campaigns still lies at the estate 2 of his 
great-grandson, the late Samuel D. Ward of Shrewsbury. 
Taking it up and reading it to-day, it is easy for us to see 
in Ward from the first the brand of unsullied courage. 

The crux of the expedition in which he advanced from 
Major to Lieutenant-colonel lay in the retreat from the 
farthest point in this particular campaign against Ticonde- 
roga. The command that came to leave the breastwork, 
where at imminent danger to his life he stood amid his 
falling comrades for one whole day of bloody attack, Ward 
stigmatizes in his diary under that date as given at a point 
whence they so soon "shamefully retreated!" Had the 
faintest flaw of the fear of a coward lurked in the iron of 
Artemas Ward's blood, it would have manifested itself in 
these fierce and virgin battles where were hand-to-hand 
fights in trackless wilds against the cunning of superior 
foes. Nowhere is there a hint of anything but dare and 



iHis wife was a great grand-daughter of Increase Mather. 
2Adjacent to the General Ward homestead. On the ancient farm 
Artemas Ward was born, Nov. 7, 1727. 



14 MASTER MINDS 

risk. The peril ahead was in a black, untrodden wilderness 
which masked redskins, who were backed in turn by the 
army of the French. Privation and death lay there, 
before which indeed two thousand of his comrades were to 
fall, including his particular leader, Lord Howe. But with 
all the spirit of his being, Ward was for action and against 
retreat. 

In broken battle-lines in deadly engagements beyond 
Lake Champlain, hand to hand with Indians and French, 
it was no longer a baptism of water of which he first 
wrote, "My horse flung me into the river," but a baptism 
of blood. From eight in the morning till nine at night 
under steady fire at the farthest breastwork, with the born 
soldier's freedom from adjectives or emotion, he simply 
records, ' ' Many slain, ' ' though from the forests on the way 
he passes details of bleeding men emerging "scalped alive" 
to tell of ambush and of butchery ! 

WARD THE FIRST AMERICAN GENERAL IN COMMAND OF THE 
REVOLUTION 

Such a knowledge of war began by the patriots to be 
first systematically turned against the British October 27th, 
1774, when the Provincial Congress appointed Artemas 
Ward general officer, together with Jedediah Preble and 
Seth Pomeroy. The first of the latter two not serving, 
General Ward was left first in rank, senior officer of the 
Revolution and the first American appointed General in 
actual command. 

March 9th, 1775, the Committee of Safety was organized 
"to alarm, accoutre and assemble militia," and to establish 
at Concord and at Worcester stores for powder-magazines, 
cannon and guns. 




□ v- ,% * ^ > -> 3 




Ancient Kitchen of the Ward Homestead -With Door and Knocker 



ARTEMAS WARD 15 

April 18th, 1775, it was this accumulation of stores that 
called out Gage's orders "to reconnoitre and destroy." 
The troops that obeyed the order brought on the clash at 
Lexington and Concord. 

Just before this outburst of the Revolution, General 
Artemas Ward, when all realized that they must "hang 
together or hang separately, ' ' left the Provincial Congress 
at its adjournment April 15th, expecting May 10th to con- 
vene with it for a day of prayer and fasting. In this spirit 
of deep and breathless solemnity, he retired to the stillness 
of his home, the other patriots doing the same. Samuel 
Adams and John Hancock (marked to be sent to the King 
for trial) awaited events in the prayerful quiet of the 
house of Eev. Jonas Clark at Lexington. 

Hard upon the outbreak of April 19th, when the relay of 
horsemen alarmed every highway and turnpike with the 
simple and oft-repeated alarm, ' ' To arms ! to arms ! the 
war's begun!" there came at Shrewsbury as everywhere 
else the breaking of a passion whose pressure had for years 
been clamped down nowhere deeper than in the "Ward 
household. 

In the glow of the great fireplace of the ancient kitchen 
we can stand in now, when the ponderous blinds had been 
tightly drawn and the burnished guns still overhead hung 
waiting to speak their message, the letters of the Commit- 
tee of Correspondence had here been read time and time 
again. Here faces gleamed with light other than the back- 
log's and drank inspiration other than that from the crane. 
For years only brains were fired. The guns hung ready 
but mute. But at last these flintlocks, 1 as a last resort, en- 
forced the dictates of men's minds. 



iThese guns were used in secret drilling, and the old kitchen is 
yet marked with dents from the clumsy barrels. 



16 MASTER MINDS 

April 20th President "Warren 1 of the Committee of Safety 
accompanied the general alarm by this call to towns : 

"Our all is at stake. Death and desolation are 
the consequence of delay. every moment is infinite- 
LY precious. One hour's delay may deluge your coun- 
try IN BLOOD AND ENTAIL PERPETOAL SLAVERY UPON THE 
FEW OF OUR PATRIOTS THAT MAY SURVF7E THE CARNAGE." 

It was the drive of this compelling passion of April 19th 
that enlisted before the town of Boston, by Saturday night, 
over sixteen thousand patriots and, in their lead, accom- 
panied by his sons, Ithamar and Nahum, Artemas Ward 
as General at the head of the army. 2 

Immediately General Ward took command of the troops 
inpouring from every side, not only from the Province of 
Massachusetts, but from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
Vermont and Connecticut. It was no frolic or foray, for 
beyond these colonies on to New York went "the shot heard 
round the world," and following right upon the dispatch 
of the news at Lexington and Concord, the patriots in New 
York arose as one man, as is shown by this ' ' intelligence, ' ' 3 
at once posted to General Ward and still found in his 
effects : 



iWarren, as if anticipating his fate at Bunker Hill, transported his 
■wife and children to a house on Main Street, Worcester, still standing 
where it has been moved, 1 Fountain Street. 

2First to bring the patriots killed (forty-nine killed, fifty-seven 
wounded) at the bridge and at Lexington, General Ward ordered 
out one lieutenant, two sergeants and fifty rank and file. For 
bread and other provisions for the assembling thousands, Colonel 
Gardner he dispatched to Eoxbury; for cannon and ordnance, Col- 
onel Bond to Cambridge. 

3From a manuscript at homestead. 



ARTEMAS WARD 17 

Newport, April 26, 1775. 

Sir: It is with pleasure that I communicate to you by express 
the following important intelligence: 

By a vessell just arrived here from New York, we are informed 
that the news of the engagement between the regulars and the 
provincials got to New York on Sunday last between forenoon and 
afternoon service; that the people of the city immediately rose, 
disarmed the soldiers, possessed themselves of the fort and mag- 
azines, in which they found about 1500 arms; that they unloaded 
two transports bound to Boston, Captain Montague not dareing to 
give them any assistance; that a third transport has sailed while 
they were seizing the two others, and the people had fitted out a 
vessell in order to take and bring them back; that they had forbid 
all the pilots from bringing up any King's ships; that Captain Mon- 
tague was not able to procure a pilot in the whole city, and that the 
inhabitants were preparing and putting themselves into the best 
position of defense. 

The gentleman who brings this intelligence left Elizabethtown 
yesterday morning, and tells us that on Monday the committee of 
that town and county met and agreed to raise one thousand men 
immediately to assist in the defense of New York against any attacks 
that may be made against them. I have the honor to assure you that 
the intelligence may be depended on, and that I am Sir, 

Yr hum Ser 
John Collins, 
Chairman of the Committee 

of Inspection. 

The Commanding officer at Eoxbury. 

Thus, to so great an extent conceived and born in New 
England, the Eevolution, in whose creation Artemas Ward 
was an initial master mind, spread from New England over 
a continent. 

The generals commanding the troops from the other col- 
onies yielded deference to General Ward as head, defer- 
ence being thus yielded by General Spencer of Connecticut, 
General Greene of Rhode Island and General Folsom of 



18 MASTER MINDS 

New Hampshire, "Ward's orders to be in the form of 
requests. 

The titanic task of the organization of an unformed and 
unarticulated patriot army fell to General Ward. His it 
was first to face the stupendous burden of setting in order 
nearly twenty thousand troops, arising, as it were, in a 
night, to stand before him in the morning, a tatterdemalion 
multitude of high-strung and independent spirits. 

Already senior officer in command of this first army of 
the American Revolution, Artemas "Ward, May 19, 1775, by 
the following commission was elevated by the Provincial 
Congress to the post of Commander-in-chief : 

The Congress of the Colony of Mass. 
To the Hon. Artemas "Ward, Esq. 

Greeting: We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your 
courage and good conduct,! do by these presents constitute and 
appoint you, the said Artemas Ward, to be General and Commander- 
in-chief of all the forces raised by this Congress aforesaid for the 
defense of this and other American Colonies. You are therefore 
confidently and intelligently to discharge the duty of a general in 
leading, ordering and exercising the forces in arms, both inferior 
officers and soldiers, and to keep them in good order and discipline; 
and they are hereby ordered to obey you as their General; and 
you are yourself to observe and follow such orders and instructions 
as you shall from time to time receive from this or any future 
Congress or House of Eepresentatives of this colony or the Com- 
mittee of Safety, so far as said committee is empowered by this 
commission to order and instruct you for the defense of this and 
the other colonies; and to demean yourself according to military 



i"The army reposed great confidence in its ofiicers. They were 
the free choice of the men. Many had that influence over their 
fellow men that accompanies character. Ward was a true patriot, 
had many private virtues and was prudent and highly esteemed." 
— Frothingham, "Siege of Boston," p. 103. 



ART EM AS WARD 19 

rules and discipline established by said Congress in pursuance of 

the trust reposed in you. 

By order of the Congress, 

19 May, A. D. 1775. 

T TTr Pres. Pro Tern. 

Jos. Warren. 

General "Ward's original placing of this vast unformed 
force of citizen minute-men about the besieging line of some 
twenty miles was so strategic that Washington upon his 
arrival found, in the large, its position from a military 
point of view unchangeable. Lord Howe's estimate of his 
enemy's lines and their position bespoke an even higher 
appraisal of General Ward's strong line of impregnable 
blockade into which he divided this multitudinous array of 
men. 

"The Objective at Bunker Hill" is a late booklet 
introducing us to the English letters as found in 
England by the author, Colonel Fisher. Through these 
letters of Lord Howe, General Clinton and others, new light 
is thrown on the American Revolution, and nowhere more 
than on the underestimated work of General Ward, whose 
original laying of the siege-lines of Boston, as well as his 
final work on Dorchester Heights, the English deemed im- 
pregnable, and spoke of with well-weighed esteem. 

A week after occurred a "frolick" at Noddle's and Hog 
Islands — a frolic which, while the engagement was a minor 
one and, compared to Bunker Hill, but a foot-hill to a 
mountain, betrayed a deep-laid and permanent plan of 
General Ward's army, which was not only to hem in the 
five thousand King's regulars within the besieged town of 
Boston, hut to starve them out by corralling all near-by 
stock and provisions. 

From headquarters, Cambridge, May 27th and 28th, 1775, 
original letters of General Ward picturesquely paint the 



20 MASTER MINDS 

local colors of the raid which any moment may swing into 
the decisive engagement. He wrote as to Hog Island that 
was attacked by the regulars : 

Our party, consisting of about six hundred men and two field- 
pieces, have just been forwarded to them. They have sent for 
reinforcements. But it is prudent not to weaken our company 
more. Our men have all been ordered to be in the greatest 
readiness this night. I doubt not your camp will be in the same 
readiness. There have been great movements in Boston this day. 
They have viewed arms, etc., etc. 

We have intelligence by General Putnam, who has just come 
from Chelsea, that Hog Island and Noddle's Island are swept 
clean; all the live-stock, as much as the total amount thereafter 
seized by the English, is taken off by our party. An armed 
schooner upon Winnisimmet ways was burned, although there was 
a heavy fire kept up continually. She had about sixteen pieces 
of cannon. 

I have the pleasure to inform you that we have not lost one 
man. 

I am obliged to you for offering me a reinforcement, but at 
present we apprehend we have no special need of them. We only 
request you to hold your men in readiness if we should. 



BUNKER HILL 

Such minor fights serve but as an index to the forces 
about to break upon one another on the two great penin- 
sular hills commanding the city — the keys to the situation, 
Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights. Between these two 
heights of Boston on the north and south, with the blue 
strip of the Charles between them, lie the American Army 
on the Cambridge side and the King's regulars cooped 
up in Boston. The American belt-line of troops General 
Ward stretched in a semi-circle over twelve miles from 
Winter Hill on the left wing to Roxbury church on the right 



ARTEMAS WARD 21 

wing. It comprised by this time over sixteen thousand 
colonists. The English army, which consisted of at first 
some five thousand troops, was now to become, soon after 
Lexington and Concord, ten thousand, through reinforce- 
ments from England by Generals Howe, Clinton and Bur- 
goyne. 

The situation is in the prepossession of the two hills. 
With a judgment confirmed by the result, General Ward 
was opposed, for strategic reasons, to their occupying 
with a fortification Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill. So 
was General Warren. They called it at once "rash and 
imprudent." But others in the council of war alleging 
that the army was growing restless and the country dissat- 
isfied, voted to proceed. 

Upon the decision of the Committee of Safety to fortify 
it, Bunker and Breed's Hills at once became the storm- 
centre. 

On a bright moonlight night, June 16th, 1775, Colonel 
William Prescott with over one thousand men set out to 
throw up and occupy a redoubt and breastwork. In the 
rear two hundred yards back behind a low stone wall, Cap- 
tain Gridley, the engineer of the works, held the left flank. 
Reed and Stark the next morning increased the number to 
between twelve and fifteen hundred men. Against this 
force was flung the entire attack of the British army and 
navy. 

Over three thousand of the ten thousand King's troops 
had begun to cross by one o'clock on the 17th. Since day- 
break the frigate Lively had been firing at the exposed 
works, which soon, together with burning Charlestown, 
became the target for not only the Lively, but the frigates 
Somerset, Symmetry, Cerberus, Falcon, Glasgow and four 
floating batteries. 



22 MASTER MINDS 

'June 20th, 1775, seven men of the Provincial Congress, 
acting for the Committee of Safety, three days after the 
battle forwarded this record of the engagement to the Con- 
tinental Congress: 

"We think it an indisputable duty to inform you that 
reinforcements from Ireland, both of horse and foot, being 
arrived (the number unknown), and having intelligence 
that General Gage was about to take possession of the 
advantageous posts in Charlestown and in Dorchester 
Point, the Committee of Safety advised that our troops 
should prepossess them if possible. 

"Accordingly on Friday evening, the 16th instant, this 
was effected by about twelve hundred men. About day- 
light on Saturday morning their line of circumvallation on 
a small hill south of Bunker's Hill in Charlestown was 
closed. 

"At this time the 'Lively' man-of-war began to fire upon 
them. A number of our enemy's ships, tenders, scows and 
floating batteries soon came up, from all of which the fire 
was general by twelve o 'clock. About two the enemy began 
to land at a point which leads out towards Noddle 's Island, 
and immediately marched up to our intrenchments, from 
which they were twice repulsed, but in the third attack 
forced them. Our forces which were in the lines, as well 
as those sent out for their support, were greatly annoyed 
by balls and bombs from Cops Hill, the ships, scows, etc. 
At this time the buildings in Charlestown appeared in 
flames in almost every quarter, kindled by hot balls, and 
are laid since in ashes. Though the scene was most horri- 
ble and altogether new to most of the men, yet many stood 
and received wounds by swords and bayonets before they 
quitted their lines. At five o'clock the enemy were in full 
possession of all the posts within the isthmus. In the even- 




Watching the Battle of Bunker II hi. 



ARTEMAS WARD 23 

ing and night following, General Ward extended his 
intrenchments before made at the stone house over Winter 
Hill. About six o'clock of the same day the enemy began 
to cannonade Roxbury from Boston Neck and elsewhere, 
which they continued twenty-four hours with little spirit 
and less effect. ' ' 

"If any error has been made on our side, it was in 
taking a post so much exposed. ' ' 

When the bombs were bursting over Charlestown and 
the buildings "kindled by hot balls" were in flames, two 
shadows crossed the path of the Commander-in-chief, 
Artemas Ward. They were cast by the General 's third son, 
Tommy, who had been left at home, but who, rebelling at 
staying there, took hold tightly by the hand a lad with 
whom he had beaten his way from Shrewsbury forty miles 
away and appeared breathlessly headed for the battle. 

"How's this, Tommy?" vociferated the thunderstruck 
Commander to the young patriot, who insisted on joining 
his brothers on the fire-zone. ' ' You must go right back ! ' ' 

The impression has too often been left that General Ward 
remained inactive, contenting himself with simply scrib- 
bling in his diary, "The battle is going on at Charles- 
town." But it is not so. General orders from head- 
quarters 1 showed incessant activity. 

It was 9 o'clock before Colonel Prescott applied to Ward 
for reinforcements, as Prescott himself did not believe the 
British would attack. 

At eleven o'clock General Ward ordered to Bunker Hill, 
to reinforce Prescott, the whole of Colonel Stark's and 
Reed's regiments of New Hampshire. This was three 



iGeneral Ward's headquarters were in the building later occupied 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and now known as his house. 



24 MASTER MINDS 

hours before the three thousand English began to land. 
The remainder of the Massachusetts forces at about one 
o'clock he ordered to go. The battle began at three. Late 
in the day, notwithstanding the large possibility of the 
English yet striking at the centre at Cambridge, General 
Ward sent his own regiment and Patterson 's and Gardner 's 
to reinforce the patriots in the battle. Companies even of 
these last sent arrived in time to take posts as directed by 
Putnam. Certain other companies, though sent with these 
and long before these, failed to report for action over the 
fire-zone of the cannonaded Neck. In reality they never 
got there, but stampeded. 

June 17th, 1775, a general order from headquarters was 

sent to the effect that "the several companies in 

regiments parade precisely at five o'clock this afternoon 
at our alarm-post with two days' provisions, well dressed, 
their arms and ammunition in good order, ready to march 
to regiment orders." 

June 30th, in a record written by John Martin to Presi- 
dent Stiles, it is also stated that application to Ward for 
aid brought Colonel Putnam a large reinforcement about 
noon. 

Though Ward's aide hastened under cross-fire more 
than once through the enfiladed Neck in carrying 
his chief's commands, to maintain a central direc- 
torate or an intelligent line of communication, or to have 
exact and speedy intelligence of the enemy's surprising 
frontal attack, was indeed beyond human power. When 
Ward knew of the attack, which at first not even Colonel 
Prescott 1 believed would come (as appears from the above 



i' ' The troops, who had worked all night and half of a hot June 
day in throwing up intrenchments on Breed's Hill, were not relieved 



ART EM AS WARD 25 

orders long before the battle ended), he acted. But 
it took him, considering the shortness of the battle, a long 
time to know. Captain Aaron Smith's (the Shrewsbury 
soldier) statement that General Ward dispatched messen- 
gers across who were interfered with and sent back by Tory 
sympathizers within the American lines was no doubt but 
an undershot of the full truth. Other reasons for delay 
also abounded — reasons beyond General Ward's control. 
For instance, when the Committee of Safety asked for the 
four best horses for General Ward's messengers, the Com- 
mittee of Supply refused, saying there were none except 
those unfit or wanted. 

The heat of the battle (over at five) occupied but ninety 
minutes. Waterloo lasted one day with thirty-four per 
cent, of the number engaged killed ; Gettysburg lasted three 
days with twenty-five per cent, of the Union Army lost; 
Bunker Hill lasted only ninety minutes with over thirty 
per cent, of the number engaged killed. Therefore, the 
bloody issue of Bunker Hill was decided with dreadful 
impetus. It was not only, proportionately speaking, one of 
the bloodiest battles in history, but the carnage was con- 
densed into an abnormally short period. Considering this, 
the suddenness of the onslaught and the slowness of the 
intelligence, it is seen that it was absolutely impossible, 
after the first intelligence of the enemy's frontal charge, 
for General Ward to have wisely acted sooner than he did. 

Yet before and during this ninety minutes' conflict, 



by others Colonel Prescott at first did not believe the 

British would attack his redoubt, and when he saw the movement he 
felt assured he could easily repulse any assailants, and it was nine 
o 'clock before he applied to General Ward for reinforcements. ' ' — 
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History, Vol I, p. 445. 



26 MASTER MINDS 

General Ward constantly ordered troops to march and con- 
tinually gave his orders to reinforce. 

Lord Howe's and General Clinton's approval of the 
battle's value to the Americans reveals in their letters a far 
higher appraisal of Ward's generalship than we have 
hitherto awarded to General Ward. 

The military probabilities were all against the English 
doing what they did. Their first master-stroke of strategy 
would have been to strike at the centre of the Army at 
Cambridge. Sixty-three half barrels of powder, only one-half 
pound for each soldier, in case of a general engagement, 
were all ' ' the necessary article ' ' the patriots possessed ! 
General Ward knew this. But even to explain his course he 
dared not then expose the fact that this, together with his 
fear of an attack on the centre, was the reason of his 
caution. Had the English acted up to the best military 
strategy and struck at the centre at the American Army 
with its one-half pound of powder to a man, divided by a 
river and thinly stretching twenty miles all the way from 
Winter Hill to Roxbury, they could have had a chance to 
destroy it piecemeal. Ward did not know that they would 
not live up to their opportunity. He had knowledge in 
fact, as it afterwards proved, that it was General Clinton's 
plan ! General Clinton 's plan was to cut off the patriots at 
the Neck and also then to strike at Cambridge. Gage and 
Howe shrank at the last moment from it, for which they 
were later roundly criticised in England. 1 

Till he found out for certainty their plan of frontal 
attack upon Bunker Hill, Ward had to guard against this 
master-stroke of strategy by the British, which was 



iSee Fisher, "The Objective at Bunker Hill." Also letters of 
Howe and Clinton. 



ARTE MAS WARD 27 

to bottle up the patriot troops by simply landing 
at the neck of the peninsula and thus corking 
the isthmian flask, with the Americans inside unable to 
get out. Indeed this, we see, was the strategy of the over- 
ruled English General, who was not overruled till the last 
minute. With the gunboats Lively, Glasgow, Somerset, 
Symmetry, Falcon, Cerberus and four floating batteries 
pouring in hot shot from the water-ways all about, had 
they done this, and had Ward ordered all of his army 
into the trap, they could indeed have annihilated the cut-off 
American columns at Bunker Hill. 

After the battle, Ward was cleared and confirmed by the 
report to the Provincial Congress June 20th, but three days 
later. This stated that in the opinion of the seven men 
constituting the committee, than whom no men on earth 
were fitter to judge, that "if any error has been made on 
our side, it was in taking a post so much exposed" — the 
very last thing Ward had said before the battle. 

But, after all, Ward's troops won a moral victory. One 
thing was left of Bunker Hill to the patriots, and that the 
greatest — a demonstration both to themselves and the 
enemy of the deathlessness of their inspired cause. It 
gleamed out of the American gaze from the time when they 
met the whites of the enemy 's eyes and made a martial tar- 
get of their waistbands. It sank in throughout the rake-off 
of the embattled farmer 's fatal aim till the Americans ' last 
dram of powder was wasted away, and cannon from land 
and floating batteries swept them from their feet at the 
third charge. It survived the triple fire and repeated itself 
at the engagement farther back. Then it appeared that 
England in Ward 's army was not to face a rabble of rebels, 
but a belligerent and equal foe. Then it broke once for all 
the flippant morale of English arms in America. 



28 MASTER MINDS 

' ' I would sell them another hill at the same price, ' ' said 
General Greene. 

"Washington upon hearing of the battle declared that 
"the liberties of America are now secure." 

To General Ward at headquarters Colonel Prescott 
reported the result of Bunker Hill. General "Ward 
thanked him, but wisely refused to let him go back to 
recapture the hill. A short time later General Ward 
thanked the troops under him as a whole, saying to them 
on June 24th: 

' ' The General orders his thanks to be given these officers 
and soldiers who behaved so gallantly at the late action in 
Charlestown. Such bravery gives the General sensible 
pleasure, as he is thereby fully satisfied that we shall fully 
come off victorious, and triumph over the enemies of free- 
dom and America. ' ' 

The day before this order, June 20th, three days after the 
battle, realizing how the confusion, slowness and insubordi- 
nation of officers had hindered General Ward in reinforc- 
ing Bunker Hill, Connecticut voted to place the whole of 
its troops under General Ward, and advised the other Colo- 
nies plainly to do the same thing openly, as it had so far 
been but a matter of deference. 

That evening as General Artemas Ward extended his 
lines and entrenchments over Winter Hill, it was not to 
abandon himself to despair. Even then inspired by this 
test of the American Army's courage, there no doubt arose 
before him the other key-point to the situation — the un-lost 
hill on the southern peninsula, Dorchester Heights. 
Whether or not Ward then thought of Dorchester Heights, 
the fact is, the time soon came when he did, and it re- 
mained to be his vindication and by his victory there to 
prove to the world his courage and his generalship. 



ARTE 31 AS WARD 29 

THE ARRIVAL OF WASHINGTON 

Two days before the Battle of Bunker Hill and not at 
all because of it, at Philadelphia the Continental Congress 
appointed Washington Commander-in-chief of the Conti- 
nental Army. 

The difference between Ward and Washington is the 
difference between two great epochs — the Continental and 
the Provincial or Colonial. Washington incarnated the 
Continental, Ward the Provincial. 

Artemas Ward by the Congress of Massachusetts, at that 
time heading as he did New England and the Provincial 
cause, had been appointed Commander-in-chief of the 
Provincial Army by the Provincial Congress. 

But the Revolution had grown out of the Provincial 
period into the Continental. It was, therefore, time to pass 
its leadership over to a Continental cause instead of a 
Provincial cause ; a Continental Congress instead of a Pro- 
vincial Congress; a Continental capitol instead of a Pro- 
vincial capitol; a Continental army instead of a Provincial 
army; a Continental commander-in-chief instead of a Pro- 
vincial commander-in-chief. 

The two positions Washington and Ward held were not 
identical. They were not the same. The Provincial lead- 
ership was not destroyed, but fulfilled and passed out of 
the Provincial into the Continental, the new embodiment of 
which was Washington. 

There were great New Englanders who were later sign- 
ers of the Declaration of Independence like Paine, who 
favored Ward. 1 But for one great reason he was not to be 



i"Mr. Paine expressed a great opinion of General Ward." — Let- 
ter of John Adams in Colonel Joseph Ward's Revolutionary cor- 
respondence. 



30 MASTER MINDS 

the man. He had filled his place as Provincial leader and 
was to carry to success the driving of the British from New 
England. He had not only filled his place, but fulfilled 
his place. But he could not fill Washington's place. For 
Washington, chosen as head of the Continental cause, 
brought all the dismembered colonies together into one 
new body — the United Provinces of North America — by 
knotting the muscles of their various powers into one arm — 
the Continental Army. 

Washington arrived July 2d, 1775. 

From Nathan Stowe's old order-book in manuscript at 
Concord, Washington's general orders for July 4, 1775, 
read to this effect : 

"All troops of the several colonies which have been 
raised or are hereafter to be raised for the support and 
defense of the liberties of America are received into the 
pay and service of the Continental Congress, and are now 
the troops of the United Provinces of North America, and 
it is hoped that all distinctions of Colonies will be laid 
aside." 

If Washington was astounded at the task of reorganiza- 
tion, it reveals what a herculean burden had been Ward's 
of organization. For Washington found nearly twenty 
thousand men whom Ward had initially organized and held 
together deployed in so well-planned a siege-line that 
he himself would not change it and the English could not. 
If "it was a naked army, and the quartermaster had not a 
single dollar in hand;" if "the troops were in a state not 
far from mutiny," it only shows all the more the hardness 
of Ward's initial task in leading, organizing and holding 
such a mass of raw material. 



ARTEMAS WARD 31 

BETWEEN THE LINES 

Washington's arrival July 2d, 1775, had found the 
remarkable army Ward had collected and held together. 
July 9th, at a council of war, it was decided to maintain 
posts as Ward had placed them and to increase the army 
to twenty-two thousand. 

The British army across the Charles in Boston was then 
estimated at eleven thousand five hundred. To General 
Ward July 22d, 1775, came the commission of Major-general 
and the rank next to Washington, of second in command 
of the Continental Army, with his station the right wing at 
Dorchester Heights. 

The left wing at Winter and Prospect Hills, to whose 
command General Lee 1 was to succeed, consisted of two 
brigades under Generals Sullivan and Greene. 

At the centre, where were Washington's headquarters at 
Cambridge, were two brigades under Putnam. 

During the next eight months the siege of Boston is to go 
on till March 17, 1776, the day of the British evacuation. 



iWard's rival and detractor, as we shall see, and a general not 
only discounted at the time, but rated even lower in the later his- 
tory of the Eevolution. 

"Gates and Lee were placed in service next to Washington, and 
of both these Englishmen the record was as bad as it could be." — 
Edward Everett Hale in "Reminiscences of a Hundred Years." 

General Lee's pompous and un-American opinions shone through- 
out his meteoric career. Washington deciphered and sent to a 
friend a sample of this questionable General's language as a 
"specimen of his abilities in that way." Lee's role, in which 
he later in his own language describes himself as "a dog in a 
dancing school," was one in which he jealously came to denounce 
Washington himself as "damnably deficient." The detraction 
of General Ward which he and other rivals dared, however, lasted 
long enough to shatter Washington's friendship for Ward. 



32 MASTER MINDS 

For nearly a year the two armies lie, the one over against 
the other. We open certain imprinted letters to feel again 
the ferment of this long wait ; the excitement of the chafing 
camps; the friction without collision; the nervous tension 
of the tightening lines; the momentary convulsions of the 
one at the slightest alarm in the other. 

Saturday night, July 29, it is a trembling woman in the 
camp. In the peak of a baby's cap or tucked into its slip 
is a letter from "Washington to Ward. We hold it again as 
"Elizabeth Royal" held it, and we re-read it even as at first 
it was read as a sentry's lantern trembled across its page: 

Eoxbury. 
To the Honorable General Ward.i 

The bearer, Elizabeth Eoyal, wife to a soldier in the Sixty-third 
Regiment, has obtained leave from the General to go into Boston, 
leaving her child here. If she applies you will give the necessary 
orders to the guards. 

This morning a detachment of riflemen surprised the enemy's 
guard q'rt'd. in Charlestown Neck and brought off two prisoners, 
but they gave no particular information but what we had before. 
It is supposed that two of their men were killed; not one on our 
side was either killed or wounded. 

I am sir with much esteem, 
Your most ob'd't and very 
H'ble servant, 
Jos. Reed (Washington's secretary). 
Headquarters, Sunday, 9 o'clock. 

The British army, alarmed by the riflemen's surprise, 
fear the main engagement may be precipitated any moment. 
Washington fears the same, and therefore watches every 
move and detects the slightest action, as is shown by this 



iFrom original manuscript at homestead. Many of Washington's 
dictated letters and dispatches, while still his dictations, were 
signed by his aides or secretary. 



ART EM AS WARD 33 

request Washington dictated in this hitherto imprinted 
letter : 

Headquarters, Cambridge, 30 July, 1775. 

His Excellency here desires me to inform you that it is his 
opinion the movements of the regulars on your side may have been 
occasioned by the alarm we gave them last night. He requests you 
to be prepared for them in case they attempt anything against 
your posts, and if any new movements are made to give him 
immediate notice of them. 

We have had before us General Ward's unpublished or- 
derly book 1 in which he wrote each day's events and orders 
at Dorchester. It details the long stand of the right 
wing up to March. In its pages we follow the patriots 
as they are bracing themselves for the impending struggle, 
and strengthen outposts on even to Squantum. As the 
winter drew on, as some soldier on the Neck or on the other 
side from over the Charles kicked the blazing log of a fire 
in the American camp, the British army confined there 
heard him sing camp-songs like this: 

"And what have you got by all your designing 
But a town without dinner to sit down and dine in?" 

Ward's plan of starving and freezing out the garrison 
was working. For to provide fuel for the shivering troops 
of the British, numbers of whom were up to December still 
in tents, through his glasses from Dorchester, General 
Ward watched meeting-houses being torn down in 
Boston. 



iln the Antiquarian Society, Worcester, where the writing stands 
out as boldly as on the day he wrote it in his year as Commander 
of the right wing. 



34 MASTER MINDS 

Washington, too, was on the watch. English ships com- 
ing to succor the royalists he had smartly seized, and their 
coasting vessels prevented from bringing in provisions and 
provender. Chief among the prizes taken by the patriots 
was the brigantine Nancy, loaded with beef and with two 
thousand stands of arms and seven thousand of round shot 
for cannon, two thousand muskets, one hundred five thou- 
sand flints, sixty reams of cartridge paper, three thousand 
round shot for twlve-pounders and four thousand shot for 
six-pounders. 

Grave matters of internal administration still arose, how- 
ever, to engage the new Commander-in-chief. From the 
contents of many letters, nowhere do we see Washington 
demonstrate more wise and delicate capacity to command 
than in thus holding the restless army together by conciliat- 
ing New England generals to the reorganization. Manu- 
script letters far back in 1775 expose how often he yielded 
minor differences wherever he could to secure the major 
harmony. 

So close even since September have grown the sentries of 
the opposing armies, and so short the space between, that 
deserters walk undetected from one to the other. Counter- 
signs are betrayed and the enemy is given the password by 
which they may enter the American lines. At such times 
from wing to wing the besieging army quivers with excite- 
ment as post-riders dash in to Washington with dispatches 
like this one to Washington from Greene, which we have 
reopened in the original manuscript from General Ward's 
house: 






o 



ART EM AS WARD 35 

Prospect Hill, Sept. 10, 1775.1 
8 o'clock. 
This moment reported me from the White-house Guard 
^ that a deserter had made his escape into Bunker Hill. Two 
sentries fired at him but he made his escape I believe unhurt. 
. . . If this deserter has carried in the countersign, they 
may easily carry it over to Eoxbury. It would be a pretty 
£ £ advantage for a partisan frolic. 

9 £ The Bifflers seem very sulky and . . threaten to rescue 

pq w their mates tonight, but little is feared from them, as the 
o g regiment are already at a moment's notice to turn out — and 
nj g the guards very strong. 

On again with the dispatch, under cover of darkness, 
spurred the post-rider whom Washington, by his staff 
officer, after the reception of the eight o'clock message, 
hastened over to Ward at Roxbury with General Greene's 
dispatch and the new parole and countersign, adding: 

Headquarters 9 at night,i 
10 September, 1775. 

The parole and countersign has been changed on this side as 
you see them inscribed in General Greene 's letter. You will no 
doubt order it to be complied with. 

Your most obedient humble servant, 

Horatio Gates (Adj. Gen.). 

How long the British can stand the pressure of the siege 
becomes to both sides an anxious question. It is evident 
that it cannot be long, and this means — action ! 

Beset everywhere by petty symptoms of disorganiza- 
tion and disorder, Washington not only finds no chance to 
strike the enemy, but grows desperate in his determination 
to prevent his own army's leaking away between his 
fingers while apparently yet in his hand. 



iFrom the original manuscript at homestead. 



36 MASTER MINDS 

By November 28th, of the required twenty-two thousand 
men but three thousand five hundred had re-enlisted for the 
new establishment. Even on into December, not only was 
the recruiting of men for the new year delayed, but officers 
were unfixed, with less than thirty days before the expira- 
tion of all. The whole future of the Revolution was 
indeed at stake. 



GENERAL WARD, VICTOR OF THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON 

During the past months, lest the enemy make the first 
move, "Washington had been all along for weeks most alert, 
and constant warnings fly between him and Ward. A 
warning to Ward December 4th, 1775, by his Adjutant- 
general, Washington punctuates with these words: 

This moment a report is come from the commanding officer at 
Chelsea that the enemy have passed from Boston to Charlestown 
this afternoon, near one hundred boats full of men; perhaps this 
may be only intended as a feint on this side, when the serious 
attacks may be on yours; it behooves to be alert in all quarters. 
I therefore by His Excellency's command acquaint you of this 
manoeuvre of your enemy, not doubting but you will take your 
measures accordingly. 

By the hard-pressed enemy in Boston, where conditions 
were growing intolerable, is there to be a movement 
against the stores? 

Washington will send troops here and there to guard 
them, as we see by his dictated word, and straightway 
in view of the climax, which sooner or later circum- 
stances will force upon them, he looks towards meet- 
ing the crisis. To meet this crisis General Washington 
altogether planned three separate attacks upon Boston, all 
of which failed to eventuate. They were the one shown 



ART EM AS WARD 37 

in the following letter on Castle William, the one across 
the Charles on ice, and the counter attack to Lord Percy's 
in March. As to the first he most interestingly proceeds to 
unfold to Ward the following design : 

Cambkidge, Nov. 17th, 1775. 1 

As the season is fast approaching when the Bay between us and 
Boston will, in all probability, be close shut up, thereby rendering 
any movement upon the Ice as easy as if no water was there, and 
as it is more than possible that General Howe, when he gets the 
expected reinforcement will endeavor to relieve himself from the 
disgraceful confinement in which the Ministerial troops have been 
all this Summer, common prudence dictates the necessity of guard- 
ing our camps wherever they are most available for this purpose, 
I wish you, Sergt. Thomas, Genl. Spencer & Col. Putnam to meet 
me at your Quarters tomorrow at Ten o'clock, that we may ex- 
amine your work at the neck and Sewells point, and direct such 
batteries as shall appear necessary for the security of your camp, 
on that side to be thrown up without loss of time. 

I have long had it upon my mind that a successful attempt 
might be made, by way of surprise, upon Castle William — from 
every acct. there are no more than 300 men in the place. The 
whale boats therefore which you have, such as could be sent to 
you would easily transport 800 or 1000 which with a very mod- 
erate share of conduct and spirit might I should think bring off 
the Garrison, if not some part of the Stores. — I wish you to discuss 
this matter (under the Kose) with officers of whose judgment and 
conduct you can rely — something of this sort may show how far 
the men are to be depended upon — 

I am with respect 

Yr most obed H Ser 

G Washington 

This stands out as the first one of the three ways Wash- 
ington planned to take Boston, all of which failed to suc- 
ceed. 



lOriginal manuscript at Antiquarian Society, Worcester. 



38 MASTER MINDS 

About two weeks later the Continental Congress voted 
Washington "could attack Boston in any manner he may 
think expedient." Dropping the Castle William plan, he 
elected another one — to attack by crossing the frozen 
waters of the Charles. But the ice did not freeze until the 
middle of February. Calling a council, Washington, to 
his great disheartenment, found himself out-voted on the 
grounds of the too great risk involved. 

February the 13th the enemy themselves anticipated him 
and carried out his strategy by crossing over the ice to Dor- 
chester Neck (now South Boston). Here they leveled all 
cover in the shape of buildings, also capturing six patriot 
guards. 

The British objective was Dorchester Heights. But they 
were not the only ones having designs on this objective. It 
was also the objective for General Artemas Ward's right 
wing. 

While Washington was three times to be compelled to 
give up his plans of attack upon Boston, the chance from 
Ward's side is all the time opening. The plan went 
before the council of war. It was voted by the council, 
Washington then concurring. From the very first Ward's 
move towards a victorious prepossession of Dorchester 
Heights, towards the Dorchester Heights victory and 
towards the British evacuation, moves swiftly to a climax. 

Everything favored the Dorchester Heights plan. The 
brigantine Nancy's contribution of ammunition came just 
in time to supply Knox 's heavy cannon so brilliantly trans- 
ported from Ticonderoga over the Green Mountains by 
forty-two ox-team sleds. General Ward had also under 
him most able subordinates, General Thomas, Colonel Put- 
nam and Engineer Gridley, who had thrown up the Bun- 
ker Hill redoubts. 



ARTE MAS WARD 39 

But details are over, and at length the crisis is at hand. 
It may come at any moment. The American generals are 
all alert. Any juncture may precipitate the conflict. 
Though himself outvoted as to his plan of attack and now 
giving the new undertaking over into the direct command 
of his first Major-general, General Ward, Washington right 
nobly decided that as to prepossessing Dorchester Heights : 
" It is better to prevent than to remedy an evil, ' ' and backs 
Ward with every force at his command. In an interest- 
ing letter he keeps Ward in touch with the enemy's 
designs, and Ward in turn warns General Brewer that in 
view of an immediate attempt upon the American lines, the 
troops "lye upon their arms" and the picket be "so dis- 
posed as to give them a warm reception." 

Washington betrays great caution. It is evident that it 
is hard for him to share Ward's convictions that the affair 
is to go through without a hitch and be a clean sweep for 
the American forces. 

It is yet but February 27th, and March 17th, the day of 
the British evacuation of Boston, is three weeks distant. 
Washington fears an attack while Ward is unprepared. 
But his fear again and again turns out unfounded, as, for 
instance, he here himself declares to General Ward from 
Cambridge, February 27th, 1776 1 : 

We were falsely alarmed a while ago with an account of the 
regulars coming over from the Castle "William to Dorchester. Mr. 
Bayler whom I immediately sent is just returned with a contra- 
diction of it. But as a rascally Eifleman went it last night & 
will no doubt give all the intelligence he can, wd it not be prudent 
to keep Six or Eight trusty men by way of Lookouts or Patrols 



iThis letter, originally found at the residence, is also in Miss 
Ward's "Old Times in Shrewsbury," p. 168. 



40 MASTER MINDS 

tonight on the point next to the Castle as well as in Nuke Hill; 
at the same time ordering particular Eegiments to be ready to 
march at a moment's notice to the Heights of Dorchester. For 
should the enemy get Possession of those hills before us, they 
would render it a difficult task to dispossess them. Better it is 
therefore to prevent than to remedy an evil. 

To draw attention from the right wing's operations of 
Major-general Ward, Saturday night, March 2d, the left 
wing north of Boston began cannonading, and continued 
cannonading the nights of Sunday and Monday, March 3d 
and 4th. So great was the din and so skillful were the 
manoeuvres that Knox's forty-two ox teams hauled the 
Ticonderoga cannon on "screwed" straw over the frozen 
earth of Dorchester Neck within a mile of the English sen- 
tries without discovery. March 3d, preceding the day 
(March 4th) on which General Thomas' ox-teams were to 
carry up the cannon, came this letter from Washington to 
Ward: 1 

To Major General Ward, 

Commanding at Eoxbury, 

Cambridge 3 March 1776 

Sir: My letter of last Night would inform you that the Gen'l 
officers at this place thought it dangerous to delay taking post 
on Dorchester Hills, least they should be possessed before us by 
the Enemy, and therefore Involve us in difficulties which we should 
not know how to extricate ourselves from — This opinion they were 
inclined to adopt from a belief, indeed almost a certain knowledge, 
of the Enemy's being apprised of our designs that way. 

You should make choice of some good Eegiments to go on the 
morning after the Post is taken, under the command of General 
Thomas — the number of men you shall judge necessary for this 
Eelief may be ordered. I should think from two to three thousand, 
as circumstances may require, would be enough. I shall send you 



lit is the most highly graphic of several Dorchester Heights 
letters, and is now in the Ward homestead. 



ARTEMAS WARD 41 

from thence two Regiments to be at Roxbury early on Tuesday 
morning to strengthen your lines and I shall send you from hence 
tomorrow evening two Companies of Riflemen, which with the three 
now there may be part of the Relief to go on with Gen'l Thomas — 
these Five companies may be placed under the care of Captain Hugh 
Stephenson subject to the Command of the officer Commanding at the 
Post (Dorchester). 

— They will I think be able to gald the Enemy sorely in the march 
from the boats in landing. A Blind along the Causey should be 
thrown up, if possible while the other work is about; especially on 
the Dorchester side, as that is nearest the Enemy's Guns and most 
exposed. We calculate I think that 800 men would do the whole 
Causey with great ease in a night if the marsh is not got bad to 
work again and the tide gives no great Interruption. — 

250 able men I should think would soon fell the Trees for the 
Abettes but what number it may take to get them, the Fascines, 
Chandeliers etc. in place I know not — 750 men (the working party 
carrying their arms) will I should think be sufficient for a Cov- 
ering party, these to be posted on Nuke Hill — or the little hill in 
front of the 2nd hill looking into Boston Bay — and near the point 
opposite the Castle — sentries to be kept between the Parties and 
some on the back side looking towards Squantum. 

As I have a very high opinion of the defense which may be made 
with barrels from either of the hills, I could wish you to have a 
number over. Perhaps single barrels would be better than Linking of 
them together, being less liable to accidents. The Hoops should 
be well nailed on else they will soon fly and the casks fall to pieces. 

You must take care that the necessary notice is given to the 
Militia agreeable to the plan settled with General Thomas. I shall 
desire Col'n Gridley and Col'n Knox to be over tomorrow to lay out 
the work. I recollect nothing more at present to mention to you — you 
will settle matters with the officers with you, as what I have here 
said is intended rather to convey my ideas generally than wishing 
them to be adhered to strictly. 

I am with esteem etc. Sir 

Yr most Obed. Servt 

Go Washington. 

Monday, March 4th, soon after General Thomas had 
started from General Ward's camp with twelve hundred 



42 MASTER MINDS 

men, he took position on the higher elevations of Dorches- 
ter Heights, where he was reinforced. Under General 
Ward, the immediate head in command of the undertaking 
entrusted to him, all worked in perfect harmony. Gridley, 
who entrenched the Heights and laid out the works, was 
assisted by Colonel Putnam. Inspired by their townsmen's 
generalship, it was said that none of the sappers and miners 
worked with more unflagging toil to entrench the Heights 
than General Ward's own Shrewsbury neighbors. One of 
these, Nathan Howe, died of the chill he contracted this 
night. 

So remarkable was the extent of their night's work that 
General Howe of the enemy's force wrote to his cabinet 
minister in England that it must have been the work of 
twelve thousand men. 

It was the first sight of the works frowning down upon 
the shipping that evoked from the British officer in com- 
mand the exclamation: "The rebels have done more in a 
night than my whole army could have done in a month ! ' ' 

To destroy these suddenly thrown-up works which could 
themselves destroy the harbor ships, their only means of 
escape, Lord Percy with three thousand British proceeded 
to Castle William, the little island just off the main land 
(now Castle Island, South Boston). Here he planned 
attack on the east and south, but a driving storm prevented 
this action. 

While Lord Percy was thus for attacking Ward's army 
at Dorchester Heights on the east and south, Washington 
planned his third unsuccessful stroke upon Tuesday, the 
5th of March. It was by a counter-attack to strike Boston 
by the west on the river side. 1 



iWhere now liea the Massachusetts General Hospital Parkway. 



ARTEMAS WARD 43 

But Percy's failure to make the English attack on the 
other side blocked Washington 's move, for which he had in 
readiness the troops of Putnam, Greene and Sullivan. 

Thus the field was left clear to Artemas Ward, and we 
cannot but admire the magnificent way in which Washing- 
ton, his other plans miscarrying, now leaves the master- 
piece of the Dorchester Heights undertaking to Major- 
general Ward, and yet backs him with every resource of 
his matchless generalship. He is in constant solicitude for 
the undertaking, of whose success he is not wholly con- 
vinced. He therefore writes from headquarters to General 
Ward: 

By the deserter from the 63 Kegiment who came last night 
from the Enemy the General is informed that they have it in con- 
templation to erect a battery of Cannon somewhere between Brown's 
House and the George Tavern, having cut down Liberty Tree for the 
purpose of making fascines, etc. Though the tales of deserters are 
not always true, yet some attention may not be thrown away upon 
the present occasion. The General thinks a strong Picquet at all 
hours of the night should be in readiness to defeat the design of the 
Enemy. A proper patrol may also, during the night, keep con- 
stantly watching the motions of the enemy and instantly alarming 
the picquet upon any advance upon that side who will thereupon 
march and drive the enemy from the intended works. The deserter 
says, he informed the gentlemen who examined him this morning at 
Roxbury of the intentions of the Enemy.i 

March 8th Howe sent within the American lines by flag 
an offer of truce, stating the English desire to evacuate 
Boston with the army. The Selectmen of Boston sent by 
the same flag a petition begging that "so dreadful a calam- 
ity as the destruction of Boston" might not be brought on 
from without. 



iFrom a manuscript at Ward homestead. 



44 MASTER MINDS 

Accompanied by an expression of the Commander-in- 
chief's prevailing fear of a trap and the overturning of 
Ward's plan, came as a result Washington's peremptory 
orders to General Ward March 10, which we reopen from 
the original as they came from Cambridge March 10th, 1776: 

By his Excellency's command I am to inform you that it is his 
desire that you give peremptory orders to the Artillery officer 
commanding at Lams Dam that he must not fire on the town of Bos- 
ton tonight unless they first begin a cannonade, and that you inform 
the officer at Dorchester Heights that he is not to fire from thence on 
the town. If they begin and we have any cannon on Nuke Hill his 
Excellency would have the fire to be returned from thence among 
the shipping and every damage done them that possibly can — 

Notwithstanding the accounts received of the enemy's being about 
to evacuate Boston with all seeming hurry and expedition, his Ex- 
cellency is apprehensive that Gen. Howe has some design of hav- 
ing a brush before his departure and is only waiting in hopes of 
finding us off our guard. He therefore desires that you will be very 
vigilant and have every necessary precaution taken to prevent a sur- 
prise and to give them a proper reception in case they attempt any- 
thing. 

It, however, was farthest from Howe's purpose to do 
anything but get away, and General Ward's victory was 
completely beyond even Washington's expectations. 

At General Ward's headquarters on March 13 a council 
of war was summoned, at which were Washington, Put- 
nam, Sullivan, Heath, Greene and Gates. Nook's Hill as 
a nearer point from which to harass the ships and towns 
was here determined upon as a point to be fortified. 

Saturday, the 16th of March, Howe blew up his own army 
effects which the over-crowded transport bound for Hali- 
fax compelled him to leave behind. Sunday morning, the 
17th, he then embarked in seventy-eight transports the 
besieged army of eight thousand nine hundred and six 
officers and men and eleven hundred tory residents. 







'^Ns 




General Artemas Ward 
First Commander-in-chief of the American Revolution 
(From a portrait of 1777) 



ARTEMAS WARD 45 

The 17th of March is therefore the feast-day in the 
rubrics of the Revolution in New England. It marks the 
driving of the British from New England. On this red- 
letter day the same deathless purpose that unnerved King 
George's troops at Bunker Hill expelled the iron heel of the 
King from New England soil once and forever. 

It is to the glory of New England, and it is the everlast- 
ing retriever of Bunker Hill, that the Dorchester Heights 
victory that cleared New England of the aggressor fell not 
only to Washington, grand as he was, but more immediate- 
ly to the New England General, the first Commander-in- 
chief of the Revolution as it came to a head in Massachu- 
setts — General Artemas Ward. 

From the time of its first conception to the time of its 
final victory, the British evacuation was Ward's master- 
piece. As the commanding officer at the head of the specific 
undertaking, it was Ward, not Washington, who literally 
sent the enemy to Halifax. General Ward, as soon as the 
enemy evacuated on March 17th, had the gates unlocked 
and entered with five hundred troops, with Ensign Rich- 
ards bearing the standard. 1 



lOn the 20th the main body of the army entered. 

The siege ended Monday. Ward marched in notwithstanding the 
fact that the Boston Selectmen had warned him of the 
pest of small-pox, to which scourge he was to sacrifice his son 
Nahum. Washington as the Commander-in-chief came over after- 
wards from Cambridge and entered with ceremony. 

A medal was struck for Washington, without whose reorgan- 
ization of the army in one sense the victory could not have been 
achieved. But in another sense neither his immediate plan nor faith 
nor action was directly, in the main, responsible for the brilliant vic- 
tory. For Thomas the heights of Dorchester were named, but for 
Ward the appreciation of America is yet to be shown. 



46 MASTER MINDS 

GENERAL WARD AT BOSTON 

Partly from a belief in Ward's incapacitation through 
an intestinal malady, partly from a personal misunder- 
standing of him as his Major-general, and partly from the 
feeling that Ward could best of all serve the cause in New 
England's capital, Boston, Washington left General Ward 
over the evacuated town, and took with him as his staff all 
the other generals to the New York campaign. 

There is no doubt that amongst these reasons, belief in 
Ward's incurable sickness was in some ways a major one 
and cannot be charged to Washington or laid at any other 
door. In April (1776) General Ward himself represented 
to Congress his enfeebled state of health and unwillingness 
to continue in office while prevented by ill health from ren- 
dering ' ' an equivalent in service. ' ' He therefore requested 
Congress to accept his resignation as First Major-general 
of the Continental Army. 

But there is not much doubt, however, that General 
Ward, who served the State in twenty more intensely 
active years, would have risked his state of health, whose 
disorder he had all along, were it not for the lamentable 
misunderstanding which undeniably existed between him 
and Washington. 

Washington 's estimate of Ward was no doubt discolored 
by mischief-makers, chief among whom was General Lee 1 



1A confidential letter of Washington to Lee shows Lee 's per- 
nicious influence, which existed in the early part of the Eevolution 
until Washington found Lee out. In this letter, existing among 
Colonel Joseph Ward's literary remains, Washington is sharing 
Lee's misconception of Ward as "a chimney-side hero." 

"It is well known that Washington spoke of the resignation of 
General Ward, after the evacuation of Boston, in a manner approach- 
ing contempt. His observations, then confidentially made, about 



ARTEMAS WARD 47 

of the left wing, ever a malcontent and trouble-breeder, 
and a man so un-Americanly ambitious, that to throw down 
whatsoever character stood between him and his own 
superiority was a common failing. They discolored the 
glasses through which Washington looked at Ward. 

It was no doubt with a keen sense of this misunderstand- 
ing and its results that Ward later wrote, June 14th, 1790 : 
"This world is full of disappointments, and sometimes I 
am ready to say that no one hath more of them than I." 

Yet no matter what the single or combined reasons, no 
matter how he felt, no matter how great the misunder- 
standing, it was Ward's fate to be shelved and pocketed to 
police a pest-ridden and deserted city, while the other gen- 
erals superseded him and carried on the Revolution. The 
fortifying of the harbor against the possible return of the 
enemy he had driven out was the only reward, the only 
soldierly task left him. 

ARTEMAS WARD, THE HERO OP SHAYS ' REBELLION 

Yet Ward did not sulk in his tent or retire as invalided. 
The period of reconstruction following the Revolution's 
loss of blood and wealth, the modern mind ill conceives. 

some of the other generals, were not calculated to flatter their amour 
propre or that of their descendants. It is said that General Ward, 
learning long afterwards the remark that had been applied to him, 
accompanied by a friend, waited on his old chief at New York, and 
asked him if it was true that he had used such language. The Presi- 
dent replied that he did not know, but that he kept copies of all his 
letters, and would take an early opportunity of examining them. Ac- 
cordingly, at the next session of Congress (of which General Ward 
was a member) he again called with his friend, and was informed by 
the President that he had really written as alleged. Ward then said, 
'Sir, you are no gentleman,' and turning on his heel quitted the 
room."— Drake: "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex, paae 
260. y 



48 MASTER MINDS 

In the swept-clean nation, devils of fratricidal conflict 
worse than the first seemed about to tear young America 
to pieces. 

Were the arms that had but lately given the Republic 
birth now to turn upon it and rend it ? 

This was a crisis immediate and fearful. 

The trouble was crucial, severe and threatening. 

Bankrupt even to the melting of their pewter which was 
gone ; destitute to the clothes off their backs which they had 
given ; in debt and everything mortgaged ; lands foraged 
and overrun ; farms neglected ; church habits broken ; hus- 
bands and sons killed or incapacitated; standards and 
morals frequently demoralized, — in fine, parts of the coun- 
try upon which the Revolutionary centres drew ready to 
lose themselves in a reaction of debt, disorder and discour- 
agement, strong hands were needed to save the State. 

Letters and messages lie in Ward's trunk rehearsing 
"crimes which reached the very existence of social order 
which were perpetrated without content." 

Washington's messages are filled with the situation. In 
Pennsylvania he has to recall the army. In August, 1786, 
Washington most seriously took notice of this state of rebel- 
lion and declared: "A letter received from General Knox 
— just returned from Massachusetts — is replete with mel- 
ancholy accounts of the important designs of a consider- 
able part of that people. Among other things he says: 
' Their creed is that the property of the United States had 
been protected by the exertion of all, and therefore ought to 
be the common property of all; and he that attempts oppo- 
sition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice and 
ought to be swept from off the face of the earth. ' ' ' Again 
"they are determined to annihilate all debts, and have 
agrarian laws by means of unbonded paper money. The 



ART EM AS WARD 49 

number of these people in Massachusetts amounts to one- 
fifth part of several populous counties, and to them may be 
collected people of similar sentiments from the states of 
Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire, so as to 
constitute a body of about twelve or fifteen thousand des- 
perate and unprincipled men. They are chiefly of the 
young and active part of the community. 

"How melancholy is the reflection," concludes Washing- 
ton, "that in so short space we should have made such 
long strides towards fulfilling the prediction of our trans- 
atlantic foes: 'Leave them to themselves and their govern- 
ment will soon dissolve. ' Will not the wise and good strive 
hard to avert this evil ? ' ' 

February 3d, 1787, Washington added: "If three years 
since, any person had told me that there would have been a 
formidable rebellion as exists to-day against the laws and 
constitution of our making, I should have thought him a 
bedlamite or a fit subject for a mad-house." 

In Massachusetts, which had breasted the Revolutionary 
conflicts and had become a field of battle, the dead were 
many and the sick legion. "The pitiable condition of the 
injured and unfortunate inhabitants of Massachusetts," 
was a phrase used in letters to Ward to describe the 
people's suffering. To cap the climax, it was a population 
who had given their all in blood and money to supply the 
sinews of war which had not been wrenched from them but 
offered gladly upon their country's altar, that was to meet 
the debtor's fate and the mortgagee's hammer. Executions 
for debt were being everywhere served. 1 Inability to meet 
the demands of creditors cruelly stung the New England 



iln 1784 more than 2000 actions were entered in the county of 
Worcester. 



4 



50 MASTER MINDS 

pride. All this was intensified by prophets of evil, agitators 
and alarmists. 

Repudiation of debt and stay of execution — this became 
the natural and popular outcry in Massachusetts as well as at 
other centres of disturbance. The people started to take the 
law into their own hands and initiate a reign of lawlessness. 

In New England it took the form of Shays' Rebellion. 
The centre of Shays' Rebellion was "Worcester, the Heart 
of the Commonwealth, and, strange to say by the very 
home of "Ward — the first hero of its defeat. 

The best of "Ward's old captains in the Revolution 
headed the militia, whose ranks were hot-beds of the 
trouble. Captain Aaron Smith, for instance, lived opposite 
"Ward's house, 1 not a stone 's-throw away. 

Captain "Wheeler, another townsman, rebelled, to say 
nothing of the rank and file who enlisted everywhere under 
"Ward's old comrades. Captain Daniel Shays, the ring- 
leader himself, was also one of "Ward's captains. 

To let the rebellion swell from such a start till it over- 
flowed and became one with the other ferment in other col- 
onies would be civil war and the nation's death. Now came 
a beautiful proof of "Ward's unflinching love of country 
after his being superseded in "Washington's staff by such 
as Lee and Gates. He might, through sympathy with his 
own New England, his soldiers and their homes and 
through jealousy of "Washington, have let the evil go on. 

But no! To down Shays' hand and break the rebellion 
became the work of his mind and tongue. 

Artemas "Ward was at this time Chief-justice of the 
Court of Common Pleas. The first Tuesday in September, 



i' ' The house built by Ward 's father, whence Ward 's family 
moved across the street to the present old homestead." 



ARTEMAS WARD 51 

1786, as Chief-justice with his associates, he was ordered 
by the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth to 
convene the court at Worcester. 

Should it meet and its execution and judgements be 
decreed law, execution against debtors could be enforced. 
Hence it was the psychological moment for Shays to strike. 
Successful, it would appeal to other centres of people, and 
set the country aflame and complete the prediction that the 
government would soon dissolve, towards which dissolution 
Washington confessed the country was going by long 
strides. 

Under Captain Wheeler, Ward saw one of Shays' 
wheels of rebellion pass out of Shrewsbury. There were 
many others under as many captains. They came 
into Worcester County Monday afternoon, September 4th, 
the day previous to the court 's session, and barracked in the 
Court House halls. 

Aaron Smith, Ward's next-door neighbor and friend, 
marched his Shrewsbury company up Monday morning 
and posted them on Court Hill and around the Court 
House. 

Had there been the least show of disloyalty or had pri- 
vate jealousy swallowed his patriot's devotion, it would 
now be easy for Ward to sit back and see the 
troubles pile up against the Government and Washington 
and say nothing. But he was not that type of man. He 
preferred to bring against himself unpopularity at home by 
standing against the people. 

The populace, in sympathy with the disaffection, 
crowded the open and slopes. 

A challenge rang out, and a clank of a bayoneted musket. 

It was a sentinel halting Judge Ward's cortege of jurists 
at the foot of the hill. 



52 MASTER MINDS 

But hardly had the challenge resounded when the old 
Commander's tones rang out stem and clear upon the Sep- 
tember air: "Present arms!" 

Almost on the exact spot, not far from the place where 
now is the motto, "Obedience to Law is Liberty," the sol- 
dier obeyed, and the judge's party proceeded up the Court 
House Hill, eyed by the hostile populace and troops. 

On the broad steps at the southern entrance, with side- 
arms drawn, Ward's old friends, neighbors and officers, 
Captain "Wheeler and Captain Smith, blocked the way, 
backed by five soldiers, whose fixed bayonets were leveled 
gleaming in the sun. At this point the crier of the Court 
House opened the doors, exposing a body of soldiery within 
ready to fire. Ignoring the blockade, and attempting to 
pass the five soldiers, the jurists were met with bayonet 
points which even pierced their coat- fronts. 

Saying he would answer their complaints, Chief Justice 
Ward was told to reduce his remarks to writing. Deter- 
minantly refusing, General Ward heard the drum beat and 
the guard commanded to charge. 

The crisis was faced by their old Commander as with 
gleaming eye and righteous wrath he looked his soldiers 
full in the face and spoke to this effect : 

"I do not value your bayonets; you might plunge them 
into my heart; but while that heart beats I will do my 
duty ; when opposed to it, my life is of little consequence ; 
if you will take away your bayonets and give me some posi- 
tion where I can be heard by my fellow-citizens and not by 
the leaders alone, who have deceived and deluded you, I 
will speak, but not otherwise." 1 



iSee pp. 118-120, History of Worcester, Mass., by William Lincoln. 



ARTEMAS WARD 53 

The five soldiers in the hill-top, like the sentries at its 
foot, themselves mastered by the master mind of their old 
Commander, dropped their mnskets. 

The way up the steps, now unblocked, the judge ascended 
in the dignity of triumphant law and for two hours ad- 
dressed the people, where most appropriately enshrining 
the spirit of that day is now carven in stone the above- 
mentioned motto given by Senator Hoar: 1 "Obedience to 
Law is Liberty." Repeated demands were as loyally met 
by Ward and other patriots, who remained unmoved by 
threats or show of force, and declared firmly for the Con- 
stitution. The rebels were stubborn, however, and con- 
tinued assembling till the moral opposition, in which Ward 
led, began to turn the tide of public opinion, until at last, 
January 21st, 1787, the State sent an army of forty-four 
hundred men against them under General Lincoln. 

That Ward acted with effect can be judged by the going 
to pieces of the rebellion and later the resumption of 
court. 

Resentfully, the cowed leaders, scattered throughout the 
towns of central Massachusetts, were pursued by the troops 
under General Lincoln in a pursuit winch is traced in a 



lSenator Hoar himself, the Ward family advocate, was a cham- 
pion of General Ward, and had often expressed to the family the 
conviction that General Ward's statue should occupy the space in 
front of the Court House. The ignorant assumption as to Ward 
of popular history writers, he frequently took pains to scorn. 

Compare Howe in "Life and Letters of George Bancroft," where 
Howe points out even Bancroft's fault as one that obscured all lights 
but Washington's. "In more than one instance Bancroft's with- 
holding of credit where credit was due sprang rather transparently 
from a desire to fix upon Washington's brow every laurel it could 
accommodate." This is preeminently true of Bancroft's passing 
over of Ward in order to emblazon Washington. 



54 MASTER MINDS 

diary written by General Ward's son. Some of the 
rebels even gathered around Aaron Smith's homestead 
just across the King's highway from Ward's own home. 
Their camp-fires spat their sparks and snapped their 
harmless revenge in front of Ward's very door-stoop 
till, stamped out by the Commonwealth's troops, that 
put to flight the last of Shays' rebels, who flew to the 
four winds, they had nothing left but to imitate the dis- 
graceful flight of Shays himself. 

"Convinced of the errors and evil consequence of being 
in rebellion and opposition to the good laws and authority 
of the Commonwealth, I do feel truly and heartily sorry 
for my misconduct. Therefore, permit me, kind sir, to beg 
humbly your pardon and forgiveness in this as well as in 
other matters. ' ' One by one, in the spirit of this represent- 
ative confession, returned Ward's old comrades from the 
rebellion, some going so far as to have their epistles of con- 
trition read before the Shrewsbury Church, in the presence 
of the old Commander whose master hand had dealt the 
rebellion its first death-blow. 

Thus Ward never laid down public service to his coun- 
try. And in other ways he covered at every step his mili- 
tary retreat with honor. In 1777 he was elected to the Ex- 
ecutive Council of the Commonwealth, of which he became 
President, and for sixteen years he was active in the Legis- 
lature, and he was Speaker of the Assembly in 1785. 

In 1777 he had been the choice of the people for the Con- 
tinental Congress at Philadelphia. In 1791 he was elected 
to the national House of Representatives, to remain until 
1795. 

The reconstruction period and the diplomacy of the 
American Revolution could be interestingly sketched, had 
we time, from letters in Ward's effects, disclosing the hand 



ARTEMAS WARD 55 

of Franklin, Adams, Hancock, and of foreign kings and 
courts. 

As a gentleman and a scholar, his personal standing was 
so great at Harvard University, where he graduated in 
1748, that he acted as overseer, and, being again and again 
called to the college, served at President Langdon's right 
hand. 

No matter what his disappointments and military eclipse, 
in every quarter to the end, Ward, the patriot leader, 
never once failed to lay down his service to the new 
nation. For while New England was always dear to him, 
she was chiefly dear to him as the mother of the nation ; 
and she was to him, above all others, even above Washing- 
ton, the mother of the nation because the mother of the 
Revolution of which he was a first-born son. 

In 1799 he was smitten with a paralytic stroke, to be 
repeated in March, 1800. 

' ' I hope to see you in that world where the weary are at 
rest and where envy and malice cannot approach," were 
previously spoken words which conveyed the spirit of his 
going, which occurred a little before seven in the evening 
of the 28th of October, 1800, as the family circle watched 
the end when they parted, but when Ward and Washington 
met where "to know all is to forgive all." 

" It is one of the most pathetic bits of satire in American 
history, ' ' declared William Cullen Bryant, 1 ' ' that the name 
of the first commander in the Continental Army should be 
remembered by nine people in ten only as that of an 
imagined humorist — half philosopher and half showman. 2 



iWith his coadjutors in ' ' Scribner 's History of the United States." 
2Kef erring to " Artemus "Ward," the nom de plume of the humorist 
of that name, Charles F. Browne. 



56 MASTER MINDS 

In few other cases has the camera obscura of history more 
sadly concealed by its negative a heroic national figure. But 
it is a figure that, more and more, exposure to new light 
will clearly bring out and prove that, as author and finisher 
of the American Revolution in New England, Artemas 
Ward took second place to none. 

The curtain may well be raised on the stage of "Master 
Minds at the Commonwealth 's Heart, ' ' not by a dry history 
lecture, but by this Revolutionary hero's intensely thrilling 
life in whom the Revolution first came to a head and whose 
figure best focalizes the light of its opening chapter in New 
England. 

It is also a life, very blood of very blood, of the 
hill-folk of central Massachusetts, from whom later sprang 
the other master minds, and therefore fittingly introduces 
the group of geniuses here produced. In living action it 
shows how came to be that liberty without which would 
have been impossible such a marvelous outburst of discov- 
ery and inventive genius as they represent, and it well 
points out the birth of the freedom which was the mother of 
their ingenuity and which magnetized their souls with its 
currents. 



ELI WHITNEY 

INVENTOR OF THE COTTON-GIN 

WITH the name of Eli Whitney, Westboro adds a 
great link to the chain of central Massachusetts 
towns which are coupled with the careers of 
master minds. 

On the hard-scrabble of a comparatively thrifty New 
England farm, December 8, 1765, a baby boy came to add 
to a New England mother's burdens, which were in general, 
and in this case so severe that it sometimes took two or three 
mothers, 1 as one passed away after another, to rear one 
man 's family. Yet had she but lived to rear this mite she 
called Eli, she would have seen her life triumphantly vin- 
dicated, and she would have seen of the travail of her soul 
and have been satisfied. 

In the independence of that day, when necessity was the 
mother of invention, Eli Whitney's father did his own 
repairing. To do this generated an atmosphere about the 
place in which ingenuity was taxed to the limit. 

THE LAD IN THE LITTLE LEAN-TO WORKSHOP 

"Our father," his sister has recalled, "had a workshop, 
and sometimes made wheels of different kinds, and chairs. 



iSee President Gr. Stanley Hall's illuminating address, "More 
Manly Men and Womanly Women." 



58 



MASTER MINDS 



He had a variety of tools, and a lathe for turning chair- 
posts. This gave my brother an opportunity of learning 
the use of tools when very young. He lost no time, but as 
soon as he could handle tools he was always making some- 
thing in the shop, and seemed not to like working on the 
farm. One time after the death of our mother, when our 
father had been absent from home two or three days, on his 
return he inquired of the housekeeper what the boys had 




Birthplace of Eli Whitney. 
In the Tool-shed at the Left Began his Boyhood Labors at Invention. 



been doing. She told him what B. and J. had been about. 
'But what has Eli been doing?' asked he. She replied he 
had been making a fiddle. 'Ah,' he added, despondingly, 
' I fear Eli will have to take his portion with fiddles. ' ' ' 

Nevertheless, so well made was the instrument that the 
boy understood now the structure of all violins, and was 
sought throughout the countryside by every one who had 
one to repair. 



ELI WHITNEY 59 

On another occasion, during church-time, a watch of his 
father's Eli secretly took to pieces, and put together again 
before his father's return. 

Thus it was that no one discovered young Whitney's 
genius for him. As generally happens, in the unexpected 
and quite accidental in such instances as these, he found it 
out for himself. 

If around the house, for instance, a table-knife was 
broken, he made one in its place. 

Shortly after he was ten years old, the Revolutionary 
War broke out. Among other commodities denied the 
Americans through the English blockade, nails, he noted, 
were everywhere lacking. Young as he was, he contrived 
the idea of making them himself. By this time his father 
had been won over to believe in the boy's mechanical abil- 
ity, and went out of his way not only to allow him free use 
of his tools, but to get for him new ones. 

Whitney was only sixteen years old when the war ended 
in 1781, but up to this time, for three years, since thirteen, 
the lad had made first the machinery for manufacturing 
nails, then the nails themselves. The demand was large, 
and the nails were used everywhere. 

TOO OLD FOR A COLLEGE EDUCATION? 

As early as the age of twelve, the boy, enamored of an 
active life, had point-blank refused his father's proposition 
that he go to preparatory school and make ready for college. 
But in the play of his ingenuity, ever seeking knowledge 
and advancement out of the rut in which he found himself, 
six years after the thirteen-year-old boy had invented a 
way to make nails, he made a way, not finding one, to go to 
Yale. 



60 MASTER MINDS 

Thus six years after he refused his father's offer of a 
college education, he changed his mind. He was 
eighteen, and the hard knocks of the world proved to him 
the helpfulness of a higher education to enable him to rise 
above the common level. 

"Too old," declared his father. Added to this was his 
stepmother's violent opposition to spending money on Eli 
at this age. If he went at all he must begin all over again, 
start with elementary preparatory studies, and at the same 
time earn enough to pay his "keep" and defray his future 
college course with the amount he could save. Yet he 
decided to do it alone. At seven dollars a month and his 
board he found a place to teach in three towns that 
belt Worcester on three sides: Westboro, Northboro and 
Paxton. Studying alongside all the while, in the summer 
he attended the neighboring academies. 

To teaching school he added such humble work as making 
and selling bonnet-pins and walking-sticks. By these 
means he succeeded at last in his dream of a liberal educa- 
tion, and arrived at New Haven, twenty-three years old, in 
1789. 

Mathematics naturally being the choice of a mind as 
scientific as his, with his native originality he turned from 
the dead languages to pursue his peculiar bent, and was 
graduated in a class of thirty-four in 1792. His address to 
his classmates recalls that he took life earnestly in college, 
and showed an educated conscience. 

"We have nearly completed our collegiate life," he con- 
cluded, ' ' our whole life to look back ; how short it has been ! 
We soon must quit these favorite walks of science and 
retirement and go forth each to perform his destined task 
on the busy stage of life. Let us ever be actuated by prin- 
ciples of integrity, and always maintain a consciousness of 



ELI WHITNEY 61 

doing right. This will beam happiness upon our minds, 
make the journey of life agreeable, avert the deadly shaft 
of calumny, and be a firm support in death. In a few days 
more we shall be dispersed in various parts of the world. ' ' 

In this "Whitney proved a class prophet, with the object 
of the prophecy — himself. 

That Whitney's whole life was to be spent in stemming 
the dull, resistant tide of human meanness, and the shafts 
of calumny, he then little knew, but seemed for it even then 
prepared. Prepared was he also, not only in grace of soul, 
but in a trained mathematical mind. 

In college he betrayed his scientific genius — a stroke 
quite out of the ordinary in that day of the classics' sole 
tyranny over an education. 1 Men even then noted how his 
talent was confined, not to the course, but overflowed as 
usual into invention. In an astronomical experiment, for 
instance, when the apparatus broke down, Whitney dared 
ask to repair it in place of its being sent abroad. In 
addition to this mechanical practicability, however, his 
stopping to get an education in the higher branches was 
itself a mark of his inventive originality. For all along 
the advice of unlettered machinists had been against it, 
and one had said: "There was one good mechanic spoiled 
when you went to college. ' ' 

First having avoided the extreme of the academic, now 
avoiding this extreme advice of the mechanic, it seemed as 
if he were now to fall back at last into the academic, miss 
his talent — and study law. 



iA tyranny over liberal education which has swung the other 
way to technical science. 



62 MASTER MINDS 

THE TURNING POINT IN HIS LIFE 

With this in view, like most young men of early days, in 
order to lay by the means he set out to teach school. 
Offered a position as tutor to a South Carolina gentleman, 
at eighty guineas a year, he arranged to travel south. 
Smallpox delayed the New York voyage, but the delay 
threw him into the friendship of another party waiting to 
sail, chief among whom was the widow of Gen. Nathaniel 
Greene. 

In this delay he learned that the father of his prospec- 
tive pupils had grown tired of waiting his arrival, in the 
long journey of those days, and had engaged another tutor. 
While on the vessel to Savannah he met a Yale graduate, 
Phineas Miller, who was with the widow of General Greene. 
To meet these two friends proved the turning-point in his 
life. As he confided his ambitions to this lady, she mani- 
fested a motherly interest, and invited him, at the news of 
his lost position, to Mulberry Grove, her own plantation 
near Savannah. 



THE INVENTION OF THE GIN 

At that time it took a negro a day to clean a single 
pound of raw cotton and separate it from the seed. 

Cotton was to the eyes of an inquisitive New England 
young man itself a curiosity. Whitney had never seen a 
cotton boll, or seed, or plant. The West Indies had grown 
all that had been used in any quantity in America. In 
1770 its cultivation was tried, and it was found to grow 
prolifically in Georgia, surpassing even rice, tobacco and 
indigo. 



ELI WHITNEY 63 

But there was no way to separate the fibre from the 
entangled seeds save by the slow hand-labor, a pound a day 
a hand. 

By 1792, but one hundred thirty-eight thousand three 
hundred and twenty-four pounds, on this account, were 
raised for export in an entire year. Jay considered it of 
so little importance that he considered its being placed on 
the prohibited list of exports as an item of no loss. But 
this year happened the crisis that made cotton king. This 
crisis was the invention of the cotton-gin. 

It was this way. A group of Southern gentlemen were 
being entertained at the great house at Mulberry Grove by 
Mrs. Nathaniel Greene, amid the emerald live oaks and 
magnolias, under the white-pillared portico. 

Languidly as they lighted their cigars and smoked, they 
bemoaned the slow manner of extracting cotton-seed from 
the cotton-boll. 

"Why don't you go to work and get something that will 
do it, gentlemen?" exclaimed Madam Greene. 

"Your good husband, the General, though he cleaned the 
redcoats out of Georgia, couldn't clean the seeds from cot- 
ton." was shot back as the cavalierish answer. 

"Apply to my young friend here; he can make any- 
thing," replied Mrs. Greene. "My tambour frame was all 
out of kilter ; I couldn 't embroider at all with it because it 
pulled and tore the threads so badly. Mr. Whitney noticed 
this, took it out on the porch, tinkered with it a little, and 
there see what he has done — just made the frame as good 
as new ! ' ' 

"As for cleaning cotton-seed," exclaimed Mr. Whitney, 
blushing, " why, gentlemen, I shouldn't know it if I saw 
it. I don't think I ever saw cotton or cotton-seed in my 
life." 



64 MASTER MINDS 

But next day he caught his first sight of raw cotton, took 
it back to the Greene plantation, and made cotton his 
study in place of law. 

Green-seed or short-stapled cotton, in contrast to black- 
seed, which grew only by the sea-shore, could be grown 
everywhere in Georgia and the Southern uplands, where no 
other crops could grow, if only there was some way to sepa- 
rate the seeds, which were hopelessly entangled. 

That he might invent a machine to do this, in secret con- 
fidence Mrs. Greene gave Eli Whitney a private room in 
which to experiment. Here first he had to draw his own 
wire and make his own tools. By May 27th, 1793, Phineas 
Miller became interested, and entered into partnership. 

It has been said there were no records of his first labor. 
But there is a record, and that his own. The 21st of 
November, 1793, he wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Sec- 
retary of State. In this he said : 

"Within about ten days after my first conception of the 
plan, I made a small though imperfect model. Experi- 
ments with this encouraged me to make one on a larger 
scale ; but the extreme difficulty of procuring workmen and 
proper materials in Georgia prevented my completing the 
large one until some time in April last. ' ' 

To get their pound or so a day, Whitney had observed 
old negro mammies claw off the seed with their finger-nails. 
Could not a cylinder wheel, covered with the teeth of a wire 
comb, do the same thing? Whitney's idea was to place the 
enteethed rollers so near the cotton sticking out of an 
upper hopper of iron wire mesh that it would catch hold of 
the mass and claw away the torn fibre from the seed- 
boll. 

The openings in the gratings of the hopper that held the 
mass of raw cotton, though permitting the torn fibre 



ELI WHITNEY 65 

caught in the saw-like teeth to drop, were too narrow for 
the seeds to fall through — hence the separation. 

The brushes were arranged on the second roller, or 
cylinder, traveling the opposite way, but touching the cot- 
ton in the claw-teeth of the first cylinder and removing it. 

Thus designed was the machine that was to enable one 
negro to clean five thousand pounds of cotton a day ! 

It so revolutionized cotton-planting that by 1800, to say 
nothing of home consumption in America, one hundred and 
fifty times the cotton was exported (eighteen million pounds 
instead of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand three 
hundred and twenty-four pounds in 1792). By 1860 over 
two billion and fifty million pounds a year were exported 
(four million eight hundred and twenty-four thousand 
bales at four hundred and twenty-five pounds a bale). 

Such an invention was hailed with tremendous enthu- 
siasm. 

Whitney's battle with the patent thieves 

Crowds in flocks came from every quarter to see the 
wondrous design. Unable to see it until patented, they 
broke open the house and carried it away. The thieves 
then reproduced the model. 

Hence arose the swarm of competitors who were to con- 
test Mr. Whitney's design with the stolen one, which was 
really not their own, but his. 

"My invention," wrote Whitney to his fellow inventor, 
Fulton, "was new and distinct from every other. It stood 
alone. It was not interwoven with anything known before ; 
and it can seldom happen that an invention or an improve- 
ment is so strongly marked and can be so clearly and 
specially identified." 

"The use of the machine being immensely profitable to 
almost every planter in the cotton districts, all were inter- 
5 



66 MASTERMINDS 

ested in trespassing on the patent right, and each kept each 
other in countenance. Demagogues made themselves pop- 
ular by misrepresentation and unfounded clamors, both 
against the right and against the law made for its protec- 
tion. Hence there arose associations to oppose both. At 
one time but few men in Georgia dared to come into the 
court and testify to the most simple facts within their 
knowledge relative to the use of the machine. In one 
instance I had great difficulty in proving that the machine 
had been used in Georgia, although there were three sepa- 
rate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty yards of 
the building in which the court sat, and all so near that the 
rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard ! ' ' 

Backed as he was by Phineas Miller, Eli Whitney imme- 
diately went north to New Haven, completed a new model 
and commenced the manufacture of cotton-gins. 

The planters planted a greatly increased acreage, and an 
arrangement was made with them to give one-third of the 
profits to the gin-owners, cotton selling at that time at 
twenty-five cents a pound. 

October 26, 1794, Miller wrote to Whituey: 

"Do not let anything hinder the speedy construction of 
the gins. The people are almost running mad for them!" 

Gins in New Haven could not be made in sufficient num- 
ber to meet the demand of the enlarged crop. This gave 
the venders of the stolen model their chance to produce and 
sell imitations. 

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE CURRENTS OF DEBT, FIRE, THEFT AND 

DEATH 

The money from one-third of the crop was much of it to 
be lost, and Whitney and his partner soon found them- 
selves financially embarrassed. 



ELI WHITNEY 67 

In March, 1795, after being taken with an illness, Eli 
Whitney returned, still half sick, from New York to New 
Haven, to find fire had burned his entire factory ! 

To opposition and lack of funds was added now this con- 
flagration in New Haven ! The fire burned, besides all the 
factory, the new machines, with all designs, books and 
papers, and the firm was left bankrupt ! 

Yet came another blow. England, which was so soon to 
become the world's factory centre for the manufacture of 
America's cotton, now raised a formidable outcry, being 
falsely led to a belief by Whitney's enemies that his 
machine ruined the cotton fibre, making it too brittle. In 
Georgia alone twenty-eight gins lay idle. 

"This misfortune is much heavier than the fire," wrote 
Miller. "Every one is afraid of the cotton. Not a pur- 
chaser in Savannah will pay a full price for it. " "I con- 
fess myself to have been entirely deceived in supposing that 
an egregious error, and a general deception with regard to 
the quality of our cotton, could not long continue to 
influence the whole of the manufactory, the mercantile and 
the planting interests against us. But the reverse is the 
fact, and I have long apprehended that our ruin would be 
the inevitable consequence. ' ' 

In 1796, humiliated by being compelled to seek loans, 
Whitney had already written a friend : 

"I applied to one of those vultures called brokers, who 
are preying on the purse-strings of the industrious." He 
paid twenty per cent., which was increased right along by 
this shark to five, six and seven per cent, a month! 

But from the first the calibre of the young men was fixed, 
as is shown in 1795 in an early letter of Miller to Whitney. 

"I think indeed it will be very extraordinary if two 
young men in the prime of life, with some share of 



68 MASTER MINDS 

ingenuity, with a little knowledge of the world, a great deal 
of industry, and a considerable command of property, 
should not be able to sustain such a stroke of misfortune 
as this, heavy as it is." 

Yet Yale grit was on hand for the uphill game, for in 
March, 1797, Miller wrote : 

"Am determined that all the dark clouds of adversity 
shall not abate my ardor in laboring to burst through them, 
in order to reach the dawn of prosperity. ' ' 

Already as an earnest of this grit, Miller had given up 
all his means and his hopes of a home, even refusing to 
marry. 

Yet with it all, by Oct. 17, 1797, he was forced to say : 
"The extreme embarrassments which have been for a long 
time accumulating upon me are now become so great that it 
will be impossible for me to struggle against them many 
days longer. It has required my utmost exertions to exist. ' ' 

"The current of disappointment carrying down the cat- 
aract" his "shattered oar" and "a struggle in vain," — to 
all these he pointed in the words of an oarsman who has 
been beaten. 

In 1799 he followed up the situation with this letter : 

"The prospect of making anything by ginning in this 
State is at an end. Surreptitious gins are erected in every 
part of the country, and the jurymen at Augusta have 
come to an understanding among themselves that they will 
never give a verdict in our favor, let the merits of the case 
be as they may. ' ' 

In 1803, unable to bear the crush of human meanness 
and oppression, Miller broke down and died. But the race 
was not lost. It was to be won by Whitney alone. Yet 
without Miller's great soul and sacrifice, Whitney could 
never have succeeded. 



ELI WHITNEY 69 

Having gotten so far, refusing to lie down, he fought it 
out. "In all my experience in the profession of 
law, ' ' wrote his consulting counsel, ' ' I have never seen such 
a case of perseverance under such persecutions, nor do I 
believe that I ever knew any other man who would have 
met them with equal coolness and firmness. ' ' 

Had it not been for Eli Whitney's liberal education he 
would never have had the trained mathematical mind; he 
would never have been thrown with people of influence 
such as the Greenes of Georgia, and he would never have 
met the chance to make his discovery. Furthermore, now 
to sustain his discovery comes in again and again the use 
of this same higher education, especially in law. 

Public opinion, blinded in America and in England, had 
to be undeceived. At the same time came the necessity of 
appearing before courts, State and National, in never- 
ending arguments. 

We have said had not Eli Whitney gone to Yale, he 
would not have invented the cotton-gin in the first place. 
Now we see indeed that had he not gone to Yale, he would 
never have had the education and knowledge to have been 
able to defend his invention in the second place. 

Public opinion as to gin-cleaned cotton he first won back, 
and wheels again whirred everywhere in the South in the 
process of separating the staple from the seed. 

In the gaining of his patent-right, however, lay the only 
assurance of financial return to meet his debts incurred in 
the long, long battle for his rights. 

The first law, in 1797, against violators of his patent was 
lost through the prejudice of a Southern jury, though the 
law itself was on Whitney's side. 

The whole South now broke the patent, Whitney's rights 
being almost altogether unrespected. To recoup his crush- 



70 MASTER MINDS 

ing debt of many thousands incurred in the invention and 
manufacture of gins, now seemed impossible. Was it after 
all a losing battle? 

Perhaps not, for a partial victory resulted in Whitney's 
proposition to the Legislature of South Carolina to pur- 
chase his patent in that State for one hundred thousand 
dollars. The Legislature voted to pay fifty thousand dol- 
lars. 

North Carolina and Tennessee followed by fixing a tax of 
two shillings and six pence on every saw for ginning 
cotton for five years, the annual collection to be paid Whit- 
ney. Tennessee did the same, placing the tax even higher, 
at thirty-seven and one-half cents a year for four years. 

South Carolina, however, was later moved to rescind its 
law, even enacting a hostile bill in its place, for the recov- 
ery of all money paid the inventor. Other states subse- 
quently weakened in their defense of Whitney's patent- 
rights. South Carolina, to her fair name be it recorded, 
three years after rescinded the second law, restoring the 
first. 

Still it was a fight all along the line, and was to be up to 
the last. In 1812 Whitney petitioned the United States 
Congress for a renewal of his patent, but without success, 
owing to the predominating prejudice of Southern senti- 
ment in Congress. 

"Kepublics are ungrateful," might well be the epitaph 
with which to end Whitney's struggle were it not for the 
next thing to come. 

WHITNEY FOUNDS THE FIRST UNITED STATES ARSENAL 

As early as 1798, despairing of ever restoring his shat- 
tered fortunes, he decided to turn his inventive genius to 
the manufacture of muskets and fire-arms. The Govern- 



ELI WHITNEY 71 

ment of the United States encouraged him with an order 
for ten thousand muskets, advancing five thousand dollars, 
and adding an extra fifteen thousand dollars later. This, 
with a loan of ten thousand dollars from friends, enabled 
the inventor to erect on the beautiful shores of Lake Whit- 
ney, near New Haven, his model arsenal for the manufac- 
ture of fire-arms. 

England had prohibited a factory for fire-arms in Amer- 
ica, all arms used in the Revolution being smuggled from 
France or seized as prizes taken from England. Hence, 
no lathes, engines, planing, milling or slotting machines for 
gun manufacture existed. Yet Whitney produced them 
all, and for power proceeded to make use of the great 
amount of running power about Lake Whitney's water- 
basin. 

The uniformity system was here born in his brain and is 
now in use all over the world. It is the system of assigning 
to each particular mechanic one particular part, to the 
making of which, as a specialty, he should devote himself. 

Ridiculed and laughed down, Whitney carried many 
parts of each kind that go to make up a musket, to Wash- 
ington, and from a number of piles proceeded rapidly to 
pick out the parts and construct, in quick succession, mus- 
ket after musket, making ten before the astonished gaze of 
the members of Congress ! 

With all this, it was not until 1817 that Whitney emerged 
from financial and legal struggles, and achieved the dis- 
tant yearnings to enable him to settle down and found a 
home. This he did by marrying a direct descendant of 
Jonathan Edwards, the youngest daughter of Judge 
Edwards of the District Court of Connecticut. 

He had hardly become settled and founded a family, 
whose descendants carry that honored name to-day, when, 



72 MASTER MINDS 

at the age of fifty-nine years, after his settlement by the 
beautiful waters of the lake, he died of an enlargement of 
the glands, a malady science could not then cure. 

WHITNEY A POUNDER OF AMERICA 

He did not die, however, before his work was done. As 
Macaulay concluded: 

"What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, 
Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, has more than 
equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the 
United States." 

Through King Cotton, Whitney not only made the South 
— he fed the cotton-spindles of all the North, and he not 
only planted the North with factories, but by the cotton to 
be manufactured he has given millions work across the sea 
in England, the withdrawal of which product, even for a 
little while during the Civil War, was such a disaster as to 
paralyze in England the wheels of industry and make 
bread-riots everywhere. 

The revolution of Whitney's invention did even more. 
Like every truth that is ever discovered, its effect 
was not only industrial. However undesignedly so, 
it was political and moral. It upset the course of govern- 
ment itself. It turned the wheel of a Southern slave 
empire from its hinges. Through its marvelous increase 
of cotton, it unconsciously increased to its anti-climax the 
slave power, till it over-topped itself, and having to get 
worse before it could get better, burst into the Rebel- 
lion to end in the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Before the youth of to-day, Massachusetts and Yale Uni- 
versity cannot honor his name enough, nor the name of his 
school partner, Phineas Miller. 



ELI WHITNEY 73 

A distinguished visitor to Yale, and a great son of Har- 
vard, 1 lately remarked: 

"At the great bi-centennial celebration of New Haven, 
nobody in four days of experience and song had one word 
to say about this graduate of the University, though he had 
by one invention revolutionized the commerce of the 
world." 

But Whitney is a founder of America; a founder of 
economic and political foundations. 

Speaking of Jefferson, and the other leaders of the post- 
Revolutionary period, this same great son of Harvard gave 
as his ripe perspective: 

"The four men who can be named as leaders were the 
four founders: Bonaparte, Livingstone, Whitney and 
Robert Fulton. Such men as the Political Presidents and 
leaders did not make the America of 1812. Whitney 
played a much more important part in the development of 
the country than Jefferson did himself. ' ' 

Such a master mind well introduces circles of 
mechanical inventors of every kind that have since made 
the Heart of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts peerless 
for inventive genius. 

THOMAS BLANCHAKD AND THE MECHANICS OF WORCESTER 

Whitney is but one of many. For instance, a contempo- 
rary of Whitney, born at Sutton, Massachusetts, in 1788 — 
Thomas Blanchard — showed a like remarkable ingenuity 
for invention which everywhere throbbed throughout the 
region. 

Blanchard was a noted whittler from the first, whittling 
wind-mills and water-wheels to the admiration of the coun- 



lEdward Everett Hale. 



74 MASTER MINDS 

tryside. He made many inventions, such as a machine for 
making five hundred tacks a minute, improved steamboats 
and locomotives, envelope machinery and, strange to say, a 
locomobile or steam wagon — before the automobile was 
dreamt of, save in Mother Shipton's prophecy. Yet most 
memorable of the remarkable creations of his genius was 
the lathe for turning all kinds of irregular forms. 

Beginning with a gun-barrel, whose forms were at one 
time laboriously outworked by hand, he produced a 
machine for turning and finishing gun-barrels at a single 
operation. 

Then when men refused to believe it, he performed the 
feat before them. Told he certainly could not turn the 
stock, he at once turned his wonderful machine to curving 
out the formerly hand-worked stock. 

Once invented and patented in 1820, the machine has 
since been one of the world's great tools for turning out, 
at a single operation, irregular forms of almost any pat- 
tern. 

It is a mechanical wonder to-day to see the Blanchard 
lathe at work, as curves grow out of once rough blocks into 
the designed pattern, bent and convoluted as it may be. 

Blanchard was, however, like Whitney, but a path- 
breaker in the zone of invention that was to possess the ter- 
ritory in which he lived. 

' ' The mechanics of Worcester, ' ' once declared Senator 
George Frisbie Hoar, "were unsurpassed for their inge- 
nuity anywhere on the face of the earth. Worcester was 
the centre and home of invention. Within a circle of 
twelve miles' radius was the home of Blanchard, the 
inventor of the machine for turning irregular forms; of 
Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing-machine; of Eli 
Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, which doubled the 




Thomas Blanchard 
Inventor of a New Principle in Mechanics 



ELI WHITNEY 75 

value of every acre of cotton-producing land in the coun- 
try; of Erastus B. Bigelow, the inventor of the carpet- 
machine ; of Hawes, the inventor of the envelope-machine ; 
of Crompton and Knowles, the creators and perfecters of 
the modern loom ; of Ruggles, Nourse and Mason, in whose 
establishment the modern plane was brought to perfection, 
and a great variety of other agricultural implements 
invented and improved. 

' ' There were many other men whose inventive genius and 
public usefulness were entitled to rank with these. ' n 



iGeorge Frisbie Hoar, "Autobiography of Seventy Years," Vol. 
II, p. 159. An elaborated account of great inventors within twelve 
miles of Worcester occurs in the New England Magazine of Novem- 
ber and December, 1904, where Senator Hoar writes most inter- 
estingly in conjunction with Hon. A. S. Roe on "Worcester County 
Inventors. ' ' 



ELIAS HOWE 

INVENTOR OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 

UP to a day in 1837, Elias Howe, the hill-town boy of 
Spencer, Worcester County, Massachusetts, to 
many may have seemed the same as the idlers who 
carved their names on the dry-goods boxes in front of the 
village store. To those who knew him best it was not so. 
"To the contrary, my father's early life and character were 
full of purpose, ' ' declares his daughter. 1 

On this day, to this curly-headed joker, something 
happened. That something discovered the soul of the 
one some thought only a happy-go-lucky fellow standing 
there with his hands in his pockets. It was just a keyword 
dropped by another, but this unlocked his life-plan, namely, 
the invention of the sewing-machine, the machine that has 
broken the yoke of human labor and rendered a hundred- 
fold as bearable the work of women. 

THE FLASH OF THE SUGGESTION INTO HOWE'S MIND 

Elias Howe suddenly at this time of his soul's awakening 
felt caught by the dream suggested by a tinker, who hap- 
pened in and who had in view a knitting-machine. 

"Why don't you make a sewing-machine?" came a ques- 
tion from Ari Davis, head of the store, as he punctured the 
drift of the conversation. 



iMrs. Jane R. Caldwell, of New York, in a letter of Sept. 28, 1909. 



78 MASTER MINDS 

Unawares, he had also punctured the drift of 
boyishness in Elias Howe, who suddenly felt his mind 
hitched to a star. From that star he never broke away till 
he evolved the creation his awakened genius leaped to 
embrace. 

In reply to Ari Davis' question, the rest of the talk ran 
on as follows: 

' ' It can 't be done, ' ' said the tinker. 

"Yes, it can." 

"Do it," said the dreamer to Davis, "and I'll ensure 
you an independent fortune." 

The tinkering Yankee inventor himself gave it up. He 
could not grasp the thought or give it conception. But the 
awkward green hand standing by could, and from that 
moment of the birth of his genius the twenty-year-old 
country boy took his hands out of his pockets and buried 
them in a creative purpose. 



HOWE — THE CRIPPLED SPENCER BOY 

The under layers of invention thus tapped bear high 
tribute to the race that came flowing down from the racial 
reservoir in the New England hill-town of Spencer. 

However poor in goods and chattels the Howe family 
happened to be, the Howe birthrights were rich in blood. 
N. P. Banks was a cousin, and Elias Howe's uncle was 
designer of the first truss bridge erected in America, that 
over the Connecticut at Springfield. Tyler Howe, another 
uncle, was the inventor of the spring bed. 

The year 1819, on the 9th of July, saw Elias Howe 
born here in Spencer into a farmer's and miller's family, 
one of eight children, and at first partially crippled. 




0) 



W 



bo 



ELIAS HOWE 79 

"Worcester County inventive ingenuity was there in full 
force, as could have been witnessed by a sight of the eight 
boys and girls, all busy with strips of leather, into which 
their busy fingers stuck wire teeth for carding cotton. 

The buzz of his father's mill-wheels filled the air at all 
times, and found in happy-hearted Elias a delighted 
observer and an unconscious student. 

Yet to break the strain upon the family purse-strings, at 
the age of eleven he left his father's house, and relieved 
the home struggle by going to live out with a neighbor for 
a year. After this the boy returned home. At sixteen, in 
1835, he fell into the tide of country lads who drifted into 
the Lowell factories for the making of cotton-machines. 

Afloat again in two years, and unemployed, he found 
himself before the door of a Cambridge machine-shop. In 
turn, leaving this shop, where he carded hemp Avith his 
cousin, N. P. Banks, by whose side he worked, Elias Howe 
sauntered into the big city of Boston to the place of Ari 
Davis, the maker of mathematical instruments, whose shop 
was the place Ari Davis put his question to the tinker. 

Edison's youth was considered, in so far as it was con- 
sidered at all by others, a failure. Sent home as a lunk- 
head, given up by his teachers, his mother alone believing 
in him, his genius lay hidden in an apparent husk of mental 
denseness. But chaos, without form and void, once had in 
it the raw material of a world, and often has of a man, can 
there but be some great soul behind it to give it the right 
suggestion and the shaping force. This came to Edison 
and it came to Howe. 

Through the dream suggested by the strolling tinker in 
Ari Davis' shop, this shaping force was given to Elias 
Howe, and the aimless Spencer boy rose to the stature of 
a creator, to create something yet non-existent! 



80 MASTER MINDS 

DESPERATION DRIVES HIM TO INSPIRATION 

But it took a long period for the clouds to roll from the 
void in which Howe wandered. 

A year later, at twenty-one, he found himself married, 
and with children beginning to arrive, while he began to 
decline into a semi-invalid, exhausted after a long day's 
toil lasting from morning candle-light till candle-light at 
night. 

"Watching his wife's sore fingers stitch, stitch, stitch, he 
came home night after night to his attic, to the tragedy of 
poverty. He could but fling himself upon the bed and lie 
there, supperless, with appetite lost through overwork, and 
no longing left but "to lie in bed forever." 

But such desperation at a time when he was forced to 
see his wife take in sewing, proved the inspiration that 
drove him on in his purpose to create a sewing-machine. 

While his tired wife grew thinner and thinner as she plied 
the madding little needle, in 1843 there haunted his mind 
more and more another kind of needle, a kind possible to 
insert in a machine. 

Should it be a needle pointed at both ends, or a needle 
with an eye in the centre to go up and down with thread 
through the cloth? Upon this he worked one whole year, 
only to find it a failure. 

For twelve months to find a new kind of frame he 
whittled on the design of a new device. But he whittled 
not as the dry-goods-box loafer. He whittled to a purpose. 
He whittled to a plan according to a purposefulness always 
in him, but which now began to come out. 

In the progress of the year his creative imagination 
broke loose. It broke loose from trying to imitate any- 
thing in existence. It dared something altogether new! 



ELIAS HOWE 81 

Why not two threads — with a shuttle to loch the stitch 
by a second thread beneath, and above a curved needle, 
with an eye near the point for the first thread! With this 
the invention was born ! The idea thus created in 1844 he 
materialized at once into a model. 1 

By October, 1844, he completed the shape of the rough 
model of wood and wire. 

It sewed ! 

It — made — the — finished — stitch — in — the — cloth! 

It — could — sew — three — hundred — stitches — a — minute! 

But Howe must have means and he had none ! For a 
steel and iron frame three hundred dollars was needed at 
once and unfortunately the brain that can coin an inven- 
tion cannot coin money. 

Elias Howe's brother had in conjunction with his father 
in Cambridge a machine which cut palm-leaves into strips. 
Joining his father there, Elias worked on a lathe in the 
attic. But his father found the venture of the palm-leaf 
shop a failure, owing to its destruction by fire, and poverty 
again stared young Howe in the face. 

At this act in the drama of the-dream-come-true — enter, 
a friend! 



iThe old story that Howe had thought so much of this invention 
that it invaded his dreams is probably untrue. "We think this is 
very improbable," write his family to-day, as to the story that 
circulated the statement that the new idea of a single needle and 
shuttle-locked stitch beneath came concretely in an actual dream 
by night. 

The dream was said to have been of a king who ordered Howe to 
perfect his machine or lose his head. He failed, and saw savage 
warriors advancing to decapitate him, when he noted holes in the 
spear heads, this suggesting the new needle with a hole at its 
point. 



82 MASTER MINDS 

The friends of inventors ! To them should belong a hall 
of fame. 

Without them many inventions would have never been. 
Without Phineas Miller the world would not have known 
Eli Whitney's cotton-gin; without Edison's mother the 
world would not have known Edison. George Fisher of 
Cambridge, an old schoolmate of Howe, at this trying and 
desperate time, in 1844, proved the friend in need. He 
not only quartered the Howes in his own house, but he con- 
tributed five hundred dollars, thus forming a partnership 
in which he was to receive half of the profits. 

"I believe," wrote Fisher, "I was the only one of his 
neighbors and friends in Cambridge that had any confidence 
in the success of the invention. He was generally looked 
upon as very visionary in undertaking anything of the 
kind, and I was thought very foolish in assisting him." 

But Howe at once demonstrated the machine by making 
upon it two suits of clothes for himself and his partner. 

Packed in a little box only 1 x li cubic feet, Howe exhib- 
ited his model, making it sew at exhibits in fairs and pub- 
lic gatherings and private demonstrations. 

Unlike Whitney's, his patent, secured in 1845, judicially 
was again and again affirmed. Practically, however, 
the result was the opposite. Tailors combined in the great 
cities against him, declaring that were the machine intro- 
duced, in ten years it would make all tailors beggars ! 

The cup of the pathos of progress Howe now tasted to 
the full. 

In the opposition of mankind to labor-saving machinery, 
all inventors have more or less drained the same chalice of 
bitter opposition. Howe was no exception. Fear of jour- 
neymen's boycotts kept insulated the enthusiasm of the 
tailors, yet he still kept his courage. Placing a machine 



ELI AS HOWE 83 

in Quincy Hall, he by actual timing sewed seven times 
as swift as the swiftest picked hand. Then, to sit and sew 
at a demonstration for two weeks, Howe challenged five of 
the swiftest seamstresses on ten seams of five yards — and 
won! 

To make the patent model which he sent to Washington, 
Mr. Howe had to work three months in a garret. To keep 
food in his children's mouths in the meantime, in the 
spring of 1846, he had to piece out by engineering on a 
railroad. 

Just then his partner, Fisher, who had surrendered 
two thousand dollars with no return, felt forced to give up. 

At last once patented, the machine when exhibited 
sewed, it is true, for the amusement of the populace, but 
this was not a money return, neither did it allow Howe 
even material support or the machine an industrial intro- 
duction. 

"I had lost confidence in the machine ever paying any- 
thing, ' ' he later confessed. 

Health now completely failed. 

Broken-hearted as to an American response, in October, 
1846, Elias Howe entrusted his precious little box, enclosing 
the model machine, to the steerage of an English vessel on 
which he embarked his brother for England. By this 
brother, Amasa, he was to try entering the machine there. 

But Amasa sold his rights to William Thomas, a shrewd 
English corset and carpet-bag manufacturer. Patented in 
England, on each machine Thomas arranged that Amasa 
Howe should be paid for Elias three pounds. Making a 
verbal contract only with the unsophisticated young New 
Englander, Thomas broke his side, notwithstanding that he 
received himself ten pounds on each machine, and made 
for himself over one million dollars ! 



84 MASTER MINDS 

Elated at his prospects, Thomas forwarded the money to 
bring over Elias Howe himself and his family, that Howe 
might spend eight months in labor to adapt his machines to 
corsets. Elias Howe fell to the plot, and arriving- in Eng- 
land adapted the invention — only to find himself dis- 
charged ! 

A coat-maker gave him enough means to rent a room in 
which to construct four machines. Before he could do so, 
life's necessities were exhausted and Howe, with his 
pitiable little family, had to leave the machines uncom- 
pleted, going from three rooms to one, and even then he was 
forced to borrow money from the coat-maker for the pur- 
chase of bread for his wife and children. Finally he was 
reduced to the alternative of either embarking them for 
America or starving them. So in the fog of a soaking 
night, Mrs. Howe and her family Howe tearfully took to 
the place of embarkation. Unable even to transport the 
party by carriage or express wagon, he carried the luggage 
in a wheelbarrow. As his wife was in delicate health and 
hectic from consumption, needing all the care wealth could 
supply, he was deeply humiliated and harassed by these 
extremities. 

Returning, he remained alone to cook for himself in a 
little room, and to finish the four machines. Finished, 
they were worth fifty pounds. But he received only five ! 

Anxious only to get home, one machine he pawned, also 
his precious patent papers. With the money he procured 
another hand-cart, in which he carried the little pack of 
possessions yet left to the ship bound for America, secur- 
ing passage by cooking meals for the emigrants. 

In April, 1849, four years since his first machine, he 
reached New York with one half a crown, to find news that, 
broken down, his wife was dying of consumption ! 



ELI AS HOWE 85 

With ten dollars borrowed from his father, he reached 
his wife's side, but he was in time only to take her hand 
and hear her last breath. 

Close upon this unspeakable loss came the staggering 
news that the ship he had embarked his models and posses- 
sions upon from New York was lost off Cape Cod. 

HOWE VICTORIOUS 

Recovering from these blows, "cast down but not 
destroyed, " as a journeyman machinist he sought to renew 
his shattered fortunes. Yet in going about he opened his 
eyes to see his machines now celebrated in the United 
States, but himself as the inventor and patentee forgotten! 
Imitations, too, were everywhere in use. 

Instituting patent-suits, he secured deliverance in 1847, 
and triumphed in all cases over infringements. 

A new partner, by name George Bliss, was found to buy 
the half interest of George Fisher. 

Starting again in 1850 in New York on Gold Street with 
a five-dollar desk and two fifty-cent chairs, the indomitable 
heart of Howe beat as strongly as ever, notwithstanding he 
stood amidst the wrecks of everything but his faith in the 
machines which he exhibited far and near. 

In 1854 the patent-suit against S. M. Singer being 
decided in his favor, all contests were settled, all royalties 
became his, and complete victory came all at once. 

"No successful sewing-machine has ever been made 
which does not contain some of the essential devices of this 
first attempt," was the brief of the judicial decisions. 1 



iWhile Howe did not get his working idea elsewhere, it should 
be stated that as early as 1755, in Europe, men sought to invent 
a machine that would sew, Thimonier coming nearest to a solu- 
tion. Hunt, in America, attempted its construction in 1834, but 
came short of the finish. 



86 MASTER MINDS 

"Every adult person is indebted $200 for the amount 
saved him by this machine," declared a high authority on 
patent-rights. 

In 1863 Howe's royalties accrued to four thousand dol- 
lars a day and totaled two million dollars. 

HOWE — THE MAN 

The picture of Howe exposes a face kept happy by his 
heart, which ever through all the crushing blows burnt 
God's chemical of good-will. The curly-headed Spencer 
boy lived still unembittered in the big-souled man of forty- 
four, and retained in him amid all outer bitterness a sweet 
and sunny temper. He met his blows with a quiet, modest 
reserve, only chastened by them from his early merriment 
into an outer placitude which now overflowed, at the time 
of fortune's rapid turn, with charity for all mankind. 
This charity he showed till his death from Bright 's disease 
Oct. 3, 1867. 

So great was his love of the race, and so deep his New 
England conscience, that instead of nursing a tendency to 
lameness, 1 sitting down and retiring at last to enjoy in 
affluence the flower of his long-spent life, he offered his 
means and his life to his country, not as an officer but as 
one of the common soldier's in the ranks of the Civil War. 

' ' He was a man of peace, ' ' declares his daughter to-day, 
"but his patriotism was great, and he was willing to serve 
his country to the extent of his ability. ' ' 



i"Begarding my father's lameness, though it might have troubled 
him at times, I never heard him complain of it, and doubt that except 
in the event of a long march, he was disqualified as a soldier. ' ' — From 
a letter from his daughter, Sept. 28th, 1909. 




Elias Howe 
Inventor of the Sewing-Machine 



ELI AS HOWE 87 

Accepting the lot of a plain boy in blue, he was ragged 
as they were ragged, he suffered as they suffered, he was 
hungry as they were hungry, he went penniless as they 
went penniless. "When the regiment should have had a 
pay-day, as a private he appeared before the paymaster and 
stood in line and, when it came to salute and state his case, 
he asked about the pay of the Seventeenth Connecticut. 

"When the Government 1 is ready, and not before," was 
the curt rejoinder of the Captain's officer. 

' ' But how much is due them ? ' ' demanded Howe. 

"Thirty-one thousand dollars," came the reply. 

Penning a draft for this sum, Howe secured a proper 
endorsement and paid the whole thirty-one thousand dol- 
lars, later going up to receive, on the level with his fellows, 
but twenty-eight dollars and sixty cents! 

Already twice a millionaire, with hundreds of dollars a 
day and hundreds of thousands a year, he left all to face 
death and obey the ruling passion of the true patriot. It 
was such a passion as we have already seen in Artemas 
Ward and such as we are to see in Dorothy Dix and Clara 
Barton and Dr. Morton and all of the others, and which, 
as in the case of the Red Cross founder, thus answers the 
self-propounded question — a question whose answer is in 
itself, — "What is money if I have no country?" 



iln the meantime the Government of France in 1867, by the hand 
of Emperor Louis III, decorated him with the Cross of the Legion 
of Honor. 



WILLIAM MORTON 

THE CONQUEROR OF PAIN 

THE sixteenth of October, in the year 1846, was the 
immortal day when first was proved to the world 
insensibility to pain through ether. 

Up to that hour till 10.15 o'clock on that day, the con- 
quest of pain remained an unsolved mystery. The world 
knew it not. Even a quarter of an hour before that 
moment, the most open-minded place in the world to har- 
bor the hope, the surgical amphitheatre of the Massachu- 
setts General Hospital, filled as it was with a half-believing 
company of professional surgeons and students, broke down 
at the audacity of the claim and collapsed in a burst of 
laughter. 

The patient ready to test it lay stretched on the 
amputating-table. The atmosphere had been one of half- 
hearted incredulity, hoping against hope. Should the dis- 
coverer appear as he had promised and produce insensi- 
bility, Dr. John C. Warren, the most distinguished sur- 
geon, would apply the knife. If the claimant did not 
appear, he would apply it in the old way, of conscious tor- 
ture. 

It was 10 o 'clock — the appointed time ! 

It was 10.05 ! 

It was 10.10 ! 

It was 10.15 — a quarter of an hour past the time for the 
discoverer to walk in and make good his claim ! 

The distrust of the curious and doubting became conta- 
gious and mastered the assemblage. Even the courage of 



90 MASTER MINDS 

Dr. Warren, head surgeon, who had hoped most, began to 
wane as the clock struck the quarter! 

Upon the wincing and conscious victim he prepared in 
the old way to insert the knife-blade in human vivisection, 
saying as he turned around before he raised the scalpel: 
"As Dr. Morton has not arrived, I presume he is otherwise 
engaged. ' ' 

It was at this remark that laughter relieved the tension — 
the knowing laughter that intonates, "I told you so." 

Thereupon the claim of the discoverer became a joke and 
his name a mark of sarcasm. 

That here in the most scientific spot in the new world 
the very idea became a matter for ridicule, proved how 
utterly anaesthesia had not only been unpracticed but un- 
discovered, unrecognized and unknown. 

The conquest of pain through ether was as yet unbeliev- 
able. Was the experiment to be now ignored and the 
claimant's name laughed out of the court of surgery? 

Just then, of a sudden, a side-door opened. There strode 
in a young man of twenty-seven, no older than many of the 
scoffing students in the gallery. His name was William T. 
G. Morton. His occupation, men whispered one to another, 
was simply that of a young dentist on Tremont Row. 
There were smiles of pity and contempt in the overlying 
array of faces that were not assuring. The young man 
looked down for a moment, confused, at the apparatus he 
held in his hand. As he stood still he heard Dr. Warren 
say — it seemed a little distantly : 

"Well, sir, your patient is ready." 

Not that amphitheatre only, not only the most distin- 
guished surgeons of the new world, but all time to come 
and its share of human pain, hung upon the success or fail- 
ure of the next few moments. In the figure on the stretcher, 




I s 






WILLIAM MORTON 91 

whose neck was to be laid open and a tumor removed, lay 
represented "the whole creation" that "groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together until now, ' ' till a fulfillment of 
a part of the prophecy at least — "neither shall there be 
any more pain. ' ' 

In the immediate test there was at stake also the ques- 
tion of safety or fatality to the patient's life; for it was the 
universal belief up to this moment that enough ether to 
stupefy for a surgical operation would kill the patient if 
inbreathed. 

' ' Are you afraid ? ' ' Dr. Morton inquired of the sufferer. 

' ' No, ' ' replied the man, who had turned his head to look 
at a Mr. Frost, a patient who had gone through a private 
test in a dental operation, and whom Dr. Morton had 
pointed out for his encouragement. " No ; I feel confident, 
and will do precisely as you tell me. ' ' 

In the breathless silence of all, Dr. Morton then applied 
the tube connected with the ether in a glass globe. 

In four and one-half minutes the man slept like a child. 1 

The demonstration was a complete victory. Surprise 
mastered the human terrace of witnesses in the gallery, who 
mutely hung over the backs of the seats and pressed far 
over the rails, the foremost kneeling, that the rest could 
see. 

Repeating the head surgeon's challenge to him of five 
minutes before, Dr. Morton turned and said modestly but 
victoriously : 

"Dr. Warren, your patient is ready, sir." 

The critical operation for the removal of a tumor in the 
sufferer's neck was then performed by the head surgeon. 



iThis scene, depicted in Eobert Hinckley's painting, hangs in the 
Medical Library on the Fenway, Boston. 



92 MASTER MINDS 

At the end, as the patient still lay immovable like a log, 
Dr. Warren turned to the circle of surgeons and the erst- 
while mocking gallery, on whose faces the late verdict of 
"humbug" lingered still, saying to them solemnly: 

' ' Gentlemen, this is no humbug ! ' ' 

To-day, looking around this room, which is the birth- 
place of pain's demonstrated conquest, we find it still the 
same, and we may visit it this hour, in the Massachusetts 
General Hospital, as one of the great birthplaces of history. 

Meanwhile, the patient, whose neck in the operation had 
been opened, declared when he awoke : 

"I have experienced no pain, only a scratching like the 
scraping of the part with a blunt instrument. ' ' 

The conviction swept over all, which Dr. Warren later 
articulated in these words : 

"A new era has opened on the operating surgeon. His 
visitations on the most delicate parts are performed not 
only without the agonizing screams he has been accustomed 
to hear, but sometimes in a state of perfect insensibility 
and occasionally even with an expression of pleasure on the 
part of the patient. Who would have imagined that draw- 
ing a knife over the delicate skin of the face might produce 
a sensation of unmixed delight? That the turning and 
twisting of instruments in the most sensitive bladder might 
be accompanied by a delightful dream? That the con- 
torting of anchylosed joints should coexist with a celestial 
vision? And with what fresh vigor does the living sur- 
geon, who is ready to resign the scalpel, grasp it and wish 
again to go through his career under the new auspices ? ' ' 

At one year's end the trustees, corporation and staff of 
the Massachusetts General added these words : 

' ' The past year has tested the unspeakable importance of 
the recent discovery of the properties of sulphuric acid, 



WILLIAM MORTON 93 

no less than one hundred and thirty-two operations, many 
of them of mnch severity, having been already performed 
with entire success on patients — insensible through its 
benign influence. By overcoming all muscular and ner- 
vous resistance, it has extended the domain of surgery, 
making operations possible which could not have been per- 
formed, and which could not have been attempted without 
its aid; and by the removal of the fear of pain it has 
greatly increased the actual number of operations." 

With these first words may well go this last word of 
science, being that of the gifted speaker 1 in 1908 at the 
anniversary of "Ether Day" at the Massachusetts General. 

"Ushered in by the discovery of vaccination against 
smallpox at the close of the eighteenth century, the greatest 
practical achievements in our art during the nineteenth cen- 
tury were anaesthesia, antiseptic surgery, and the power to 
control infectious diseases resulting from the discovery of 
their living contagia — achievements surpassing the heritage 
of all the centuries which had gone before in the saving of 
human life and the alleviation of suffering. Of those gifts 
to medicine the sweetest and the happiest is the death to 
pain. ' ' 

"We Have Conquered Pain!" — so read the head-lines 
of the press all over America and far into Europe, Asia 
and the islands of the sea. 

Thence till to-day the balanced verdict of science has 
been that the key that unlocked the chamber of painless 
surgery was found by Dr. Morton. "Time and history at 
last place the honor," declares Dr. Mumford's authorita- 
tive narrative of medicine in America, ' ' where it belongs — 
with Dr. Morton." 



iWilliam H. Welch, M.D., LL.D., of Johns Hopkins. 



94 MASTER MINDS 

The brilliant victory over suffering here recorded is as 
shining a turning-point, next to the Cross itself, as ever 
gleamed out into human history. But this victory, too, is 
bounded by sacrifice on two sides — one before, one after. 
On the one side before it stands a lonely era of solitary 
experiment in the desert of waiting; and on the other side 
of the discovery, it is bounded by two decades of desertion, 
destitution and death. 

The pages of the pathos of progress in Morton's life are 
bordered with great rubrics of suffering, and add a 
signal chapter to the human persecution of discoverers. 

"the yoke in his youth " 

To enable the discoverer as long as he did to meet these 
two eras of loneliness and persecution, it was a good thing, 
— a providential thing — that the "Worcester County hill- 
town of Charlton ingrained into him constitution, charac- 
ter and courage — for he was born of Charlton ancestry 
August 19th, 1819. Here he learned to bear "the yoke in 
his youth. ' ' 

In the American Revolution, William Morton's great- 
grandfather served under the martyr of Bunker Hill, 
President Joseph Warren, whose nephew. Dr. Warren, it 
was who performed the operation for this very man's 
great-grandson, Dr. William Morton, the discoverer of 
ether. Thomas Morton, son of this patriot, was killed by 
falling on a scythe in 1759, and left the horror of his death 
ever preying on the mind of James, his son, from whom, 
with enmity to human pain thus inbred, came in 1819 the 
victor over pain — William Thomas G. Morton. 

By the time William was born, his father had 
left a farm in Rhode Island and returned to the 



WILLIAM MORTON 95 

ancestral ground of his family tree at Charlton, 
to a farm of one hundred acres, clustering around 
a large old-fashioned farm-house built about the 
old-style chimney as the centre-piece. Climbing-plants 
crept from the background of woods and brooks so that 
they almost hid the outline of the homestead. Indoors in 
winter about the huge fireplace, over which hung dried 
apples, squashes and pumpkins, were the customary com- 
forts of a gentleman farmer in early New England. Out- 
doors in the summer were the season's interests of sheep- 
shearing, haying and husking, until winter came around 
again with milling, carding and skating — to be followed in 
turn by the spring tree-tapping and sugaring-off. To Wil- 
liam as to every wholesome boy came with gusto these 
variant diversions and tasks of the Yankee lad. 

But beyond material interests, dearly as they clustered 
about the homestead, lay those of mind and soul, of head 
and heart. To these all else should be sacrificed. Hence, the 
father moved from this homelike spot to be near an acad- 
emy for his children's instruction. At thirteen William 
went to Oxford Academy, where he was under the same 
type of thorough and sterling worthies as had been Clara 
Barton and other master minds at the Commonwealth's 
heart. After a short course at Northfield Academy, he 
sought the famous Leicester Academy. Here he became 
acquainted with a Dr. Pierce, who discouraged the boy's 
ambition, which had come to be a passion, to become a 
physician. Too deep to be resisted, however, this determi- 
nation which the Creator himself had implanted refused to 
be thus torn up by the roots. 1 



iHis master passion was born with him. Nicknamed "Doctor" by 
his playmates, William, while in kilts, administered elder-tree vials 



96 MASTER MINDS 

A false accusation at school, for a fault lie never did, led 
him to break with the Academy and leave with broken 
health. 

Yet his spirit was unbroken and his self-education as 
steady as ever, notwithstanding human backing seemed 
against him. This was shown, for instance, by his explora- 
tion of the fields over which he roamed, searching for 
objects of mineral science. 

When William was seventeen years old, his father, 
James Morton, failed, and the son left for Boston to mend 
his fortunes. Though in a Boston publishing house with 
the editor of the Christian Witness, he was disappointed at 
the failure to get time for self-education, and he returned 
home. "Minding" the counter of his father's store, which 
had started up again at Charlton, he found time to carry 
on between hours his cherished study and self-culture. 

In 1840, when twenty-one years old, he heard of 
the new science of dentistry. It was rising out of 
the old day of ignorant blundering over broken crowns 
and tampering with teeth whose roots were left embedded 
in the jaw. To counteract this, the American Association 
of Dental Surgery, founded by a remnant of true dental 
surgeons, was established at Baltimore. 

Its shorter course offered Morton the chance that medi- 
cine's curriculum denied him, and eighteen months he 
studied the elements of dentistry. 

In 1842 he commenced practicing in Boston. Not con- 
tent to abide by the present stage of his profession, he paid 
several hundreds of dollars to experiment in the scientific 
laboratory of a Dr. Keep. One investigation led to another, 



and bread pills, almost putting an end to his baby sister by a de- 
coction he poured down her throat. 



WILLIAM MORTON 97 

and in the steps of each smaller discovery he caught sight 
of a larger. 

THE STEPS TO THE DISCOVERY 

Seeking a solder that would not leave a black line on false 
teeth, he discovered that to use it old fangs must be 
removed. The pain of this was intense. Great numbers of 
patients came, only to go away. 

But pain must be removed or his new solder would prove 
useless. 

So by fidelity to this little step of soldering false teeth, 
he was led face to face with the quest of his life — the con- 
quest of pain. 

Brandy and champagne as intoxicants, opium to the pro- 
portion of ten to twelve grains, laudanum to the proportion 
of four hundred drops — all these he tried, even extracting 
by the last expedient the fangs of both jaws in a woman 
patient. Yet by none of these methods did he realize suc- 
cess. Magnetism likewise failed, as did the others. 

Unfound as yet, further to pursue his search, he entered 
the Medical College in Boston to study during his spare 
hours as a physician. 

In March, 1844, his practice having reached many thou- 
sands a year, he married Elizabeth Whitman of Farming- 
ton, Conn. 

In July of this year, while filling a tooth of a Miss Par- 
rot of Gloucester, to appease her great pain he rubbed sul- 
phuric ether on the outside of the jaw. One day, in the 
series of treatments as a result of this one of several sit- 
tings, he noted the parts had become benumbed through the 
action of the ether on the outside. 

What if the whole system could thus be benumbed ! What 
an insensibility to pain might result ! 
7 



98 MASTER MINDS 

Inhaling a little ether as an amusement, or as a curios- 
ity, for its intoxicating effects, had been known ; also it had 
been used for its medicinal effects in easing inflammation 
in the bronchial passages. But could it be inhaled in quan- 
tities enough to produce complete insensibility to the 
severest pain and not be itself dangerous and suicidal ? 

The answer to this was unknown. No one had tried it. 
No one had dared try. That summer, to experiment, he 
went to his father-in-law's house in Farmington. His ex- 
periments with goldfish and insects and animals did not 
satisfactorily answer this question, but left it open, and 
his gay young friends made him, on account of trying the 
experiments, a butt of humor. Even his wife shared the 
fun, but he rebuked her, saying : 

"The time will come, my dear, when I will banish pain. 
I shall succeed. There must be some way of deadening 
pain. I have a work to do in the world, Lizzie. The time 
will come when I will do away with pain. ' ' 

"Dr. Morton," added his wife, who recounts these 
moments, ' ' was one of those tremendously earnest men who 
believe they have a high destiny to fulfill. ' ' 

On his return to Medical School he faced a new incentive 
to make the discovery. It lay in the operating-room, the 
chamber of horrors which surgery then presented, of con- 
scious victims writhing in awful struggles under the knife. 
This circular chamber was in the dome of the Massachusetts 
General Hospital, placed distant from the wards full of 
patients, that they might not hear the shrieks. Here 
he saw three or four strong men always in readiness to fall 
upon a sufferer and hold him down to the torture. Per- 
haps it was to wrench a hip-joint out of a false position in 
order to replace a dislocation. If so, he saw the strong men 
tie a rope to the limb of the patient, then all fall on the 



WILLIAM MORTON 99 

line and heave till the bones left the socket. Upon the 
screaming subject he watched the cords tighten, the sinews 
crack, the beefy men hold on, and the sufferer faint before 
the snap back into the socket. 

At other times he watched the knife 's edge plunge under 
a conscious gentlewoman's skin and go on prodding to open 
the flesh while she remained conscious, till her staggering 
shrieks and acute convulsions again demanded the body of 
strong men, who fell upon her quivering form and held her 
down till she swooned away. 

Such sights, repeated upon the vision of one inheriting 
an instinctive dread of suffering, could but fan to a 
flame the passion in his mind to discover a deadener of 
pain, and to apply to the whole system its gracious allevia- 
tion of agony. 

In the meantime his profession of dentistry in his ex- 
tended business at Tremont Row prospered to such an extent 
that he had to employ a number of assistant dentists, and 
his income by 1844 became twenty thousand dollars a year. 
No rest was the result. But his creative energies compelled 
him to proceed. Minor discoveries were continually made. 
The use of atmospheric pressure to mould the shape of 
the teeth and overcome harelip added to his fame, as did a 
plant for the manufacture of false teeth by his own 
process by pulverization of stone, colored with oxalic acid, 
and then kneaded, moulded, hardened, agglutinated, 
enameled, polished, and annealed. 

In the term of 1844-45, while studying medicine, Dr. 
Morton observed the exhibition of nitrous oxide gas by a 
brother dentist, Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford. It was to 
be demonstrated before the staff of the Massachusetts Gen- 
eral Hospital and the Medical College as an anodyne for 
extracting teeth without pain to a patient. But it failed 



100 MASTER MINDS 

utterly, as the patient shrieked with pain and the students 
roared with laughter — even hissing their disapproval. It 
is only justice to Dr. Wells to say that, for extracting teeth 
without pain, nitrous oxide became successful, and by 1862 
was generally used. 

Yet it did not at that time prove efficacious, even in pain 
in a tooth, and since that time it has been impossible to pro- 
duce with it insensibility to pain in surgery proper. 

The failure only spurred on Dr. Morton to try out his 
specific — sulphuric ether by inhalation. 

To devote himself wholly to this experiment, June 30th, 
1846, he turned over his business of twenty thousand dol- 
lars a year to Dr. Hayden, his assistant. 

Utterly self-forgetful; regardless of man's jealousy of 
discoverers ; caught up only by the vision of relieving a 
world's suffering, he hesitated not a moment, but took the 
step and went on. 

It was, as we have seen, the general belief in Morton's 
day that ether in use sufficient to stupefy the system would 
kill the patient, and no man dared take the risk. 

Pereira, in his medical works, then in general use, stated 
that to relieve whooping-cough, dyspepsia, and inflamma- 
tion in the bronchial tubes, ether could be inhaled if mixed 
with atmospheric air — a fact discovered in England in 
1812. 

Dr. Morton was therefore confronted by the question — 
could ether be inhaled in quantities to render a patient in- 
sensible to pain, in acute operations, without killing him? 
This he knew had never been discovered. The verdict of 
the books and times concurred in saying it would be fatal. 

Velpean, the noted French surgeon, thus declared the 
scientific world 's latest opinion in 1839 : " To escape pain in 
surgical operations is a chimera which we are not permitted 



WILLIAM MORTON 101 

to look for in our day. Knife and pain in surgery are two 
words which never present themselves, the one without the 
other, in the minds of patients, and it is necessary for us 
surgeons to admit their association." 

This noted scientist who called it a chimera in 1839 was 
the same one who, after the discovery, proclaimed Dr. Mor- 
ton's victory "a glorious triumph for humanity." 

Yet the investigator in no way gave up. To Dr. Gould, 
an assistant, he declared: "I will have some way yet by 
which I shall perform my operations without pain. 

In June, 1846, he confided to his other assistant, Dr. Hay- 
den, and his lawyer, Richard H. Dana, that soon he "should 
have his patients come in at one door, have all their teeth 
extracted without pain and without knowing it, and then, 
going into the next room, have a full set put in. ' ' 

To get some one to take ether in sufficient quantity to 
make the test was the task. No one would do it, it being 
thought suicidal. No one on the wharves, among the 
human wharf -rats, even by a liberal display of five-dollar 
bills, could be bought up to throw away, as every one 
believed, his life. 

Putting a combination of ether, morphine and other nar- 
cotics in a retort surrounded with a hot towel, Dr. Morton 
himself proceeded to inhale it. But he was only to be 
rewarded with a furious headache, accompanied by a slight 
numbness. 

"Nig," a black spaniel, he had before succeeded in ren- 
dering insensible. 

But how about a man f 

Dr. Hay den, one of Dr. Morton's office colleagues, believ- 
ing it fatal, refused. Spear, another associate, consented, 
but after the first drowsiness became furious and violent, 
making a failure. 



102 MASTERMINDS 

Analysis revealed that the ether administered was chemi- 
cally impure. 

THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS 

With pure ether he now decided (though not without 
great alarm to his wife) upon an experiment upon himself. 
Together with an experienced chemist, Dr. Wightman, he 
devised a glass funnel or globe, and an india-rubber bag 
with a hole cut near the neck. A sponge inserted in the 
glass globe, which had two openings, completed the inhal- 
ing instrument. 

September 30, 1846, with this and chemically pure ether, 
he shut himself in a room and inbreathed the fumes. 

"Taking the tube and flask," he recorded, "I shut my- 
self in my room, seated myself in the operating-chair and 
commenced inhaling. I found the ether so strong that it 
partially suffocated me, but produced no decided effect. I 
then saturated my handkerchief and inhaled it from that. 
I looked at my watch and soon lost consciousness. As I 
recovered I felt a numbness in my limbs with a sensation 
like night-mare, and would have given the world for some 
one to come and arouse me. I thought for a moment I 
should die in that state, and the world would only pity or 
ridicule me. At length I felt a tingle of the blood in the 
end of my third finger, and made an effort to touch it with 
my thumb, but without success. At a second effort I 
touched it, but there seemed to be no sensation. I grad- 
ually raised my arm and pinched my thigh, but I could see 
that sensation was imperfect. I attempted to rise from my 
chair, but fell back. Gradually I regained power over my 
limbs and full consciousness. I immediately looked at my 
watch and found I had been insensible between seven and 
eight minutes. 



WILLI AM MORTON 103 

"Delighted with the success of this experiment, I imme- 
diately announced the result to the persons employed in my 
establishment, and waited impatiently for some one upon 
whom I could make a fuller trial. Toward evening a man 
named Eben H. Frost, residing in Boston, came in, suffer- 
ing great pain, and wished to have a tooth extracted. He 
was afraid of the operation and asked if he could be mes- 
merized. I told him I had something better, and saturat- 
ing my handkerchief gave it to him to inhale. He became 
unconscious almost immediately. It was dark and Dr. 
Hayden held the lamp while I extracted a firmly rooted 
bi-cuspid tooth. He recovered in a minute and knew noth- 
ing of what had happened to him. This I consider to be 
the first demonstration of this new fact in science. I have 
heard of no one else who can prove an earlier demonstra- 
tion. If any one can do so, I yield to him the point of 
priority in time." 1 

Numerous other experiments followed in the days to come 
and public notice was drawn to the wonderful new ano- 
dyne. 

Scientists like Dr. Henry J. Bigelow of the Massachusetts 
General Hospital came in to observe, and at once 
Dr. Morton decided upon a public demonstration of his 
discovery. The first week in October, to obtain a chance to 



lAfter the operation Dr. Morton tried the man asking, "Are you 
ready V "I am ready, ' ' said the man, unconscious it had been 
done. "Well, it is out now." "No?" cried the man. "Glory, 
Hallelujah ! ' ' 

The quoted account is from Dr. Morton's own memorial recount- 
ing the experiment to the French Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
which awarded him the Montyon prize. — Of other European states, 
Norway and Sweden awarded him the Cross of the Order of Wasa 
and Russia the Cross of the Order of St. Vladimir. 



104 MASTERMINDS 

demonstrate, he called upon Dr. John Warren, senior sur- 
geon of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The call was 
a success, and Dr. Warren set the date Friday, ten o'clock, 
October 16, 1846. 

On the anxious seat, Morton knew the possibilities of that 
hour and its desperate chances. 

He knew the fatal effects of ether without an exact 
arrangement to in-mix air before it was breathed and with- 
out the device to carry off the carbonic acid gas exhaled. 
On any one of these points, to say nothing of the possible 
intractability of the patient, hung the fateful risks of the 
test. 

The evening before till two in the morning he was 
assisted by his wife, who, though trying to dissuade him 
lest, if unsuccessful, he be convicted of manslaughter, or be 
the prey of ridicule, nevertheless helped him design valves 
in the inhaler to carry off the vitiated air. Eight hours 
after came the hour set for the test. But the instrument- 
maker had delayed his part on this apparatus 1 for inhaling 
till not only the last minute, but beyond. This was the 
cause of Dr. Morton's hurried and late appearance after 
Dr. Warren had decided to give him up. 

It was then at 10.15 that the door opened upon this great 
act in the tragedy of pain, and the great actor, the young 
dentist of twenty-seven, William T. G. Morton, took the 
centre of the stage. 

When he came, the knife was lifted to go on in the old 
way. When he left, after a most successful operation, the 
patient, with the tumor on the jaw gone, was the first of 
millions of sufferers to say : 



iThis may be seen to-day in this old operating-room of the Massa- 
chusetts General. 




Dr. William Morton 
Conqueror of Pain 



WILLIAM MORTON 105 

"I have felt no pain!" 

At four in the afternoon the weight of lifting a world's 
burden of pain seemed to have left its mark upon Morton's 
face as he said with strange sadness to his wife when he 
returned home, "Well, dear, I succeeded." 

That is the one side of this great discoverer's life, the side 
of the lonely discoverer. 

It was — Dr. Morton against the world. 

Now we are to look at — the world against Dr. Morton. 

THE WORLD AGAINST THE DISCOVERER 

This period extends from October 16, 1846, the date of 
the demonstrated discovery, to July 15, 1868, the date of 
his death. It is, indeed, an era of desertion, destitution 
and death. 

Its sphere of persecution is professional, governmental, 
financial. 

It started with the professional rivalry and jealousy of 
the dentists. Hardly had the great news of the discovery 
cheered the world before that opposition, which is always 
the pathos of progress, began. 

There was no question of the success of the brilliant dis- 
covery. 

October 17th, the day after, a tumor in the arm of a 
young woman was removed with complete success without 
pain. For three weeks went on the first of the one hundred 
and thirty-two operations, all equally successful as they fol- 
lowed one after another in the next year, for the first three 
months of which Dr. Morton freely taught the world, in the 
Massachusetts General Hospital, to administer ether. 

Suddenly, as an index of gathering opposition, a halt 
was demanded ! 



106 MASTERMINDS 

It demanded he suspend the operations simply because 
the compound of the ether was not analytically disclosed. 
Dr. Morton had secreted the nature of the drug by coloring 
it bright red, but he now at once disclosed it, offering the 
free use of his discovery to hospitals, reserving compensa- 
tion only from private practitioner's use. 

Operations went on and the ether was demanded as 
before. 

A crowning test was the case of a man cauterized for a 
disease of the bones of the spine. Once under the ether, 
hot irons at white heat blackened the flesh till it shriveled 
back, unrolling from the bared spinal column. No groan 
escaped the patient ! Not a prick of pain was felt ! Con- 
trasting the impossibility of such an operation without 
death to the patient under the old treatment but a few 
weeks before, the whole circle of surgeons and amphitheatre 
burst into a tumult of applause. 

American scholars hailed the day of the discovery. They 
did their part by baptizing it with the name, Anaesthesia. 
The first name, proposed and preferred by the discoverer, 
was Letheon. But the name Anaesthesia, proposed by Dr. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, who baptized it with this name 
November 2, 1846, was the one accepted. 

Dr. Holmes 1 baptized the discovery with these words: 

lApril 2d, 1893, Dr. Holmes wrote E. I. Snell for his luminous 
article in the Century of August, 1894, the following confirmation: 

' ' My dear Sir : Few persons have or had better reasons than myself 
to assert the claim of Dr. Morton to the introduction of artificial 
anaesthesia into surgical practice. ... I have never for a mo- 
ment hesitated in awarding the essential credit of the great achieve- 
ment to Dr. Morton. . . . The man to whom the world owes it is 
Dr. William Thomas Green Morton. 

Yours very truly, 

O. W. Holmes." 



WILLIAM MORTON 107 

' ' The knife is searching for disease, the pulleys are drag- 
ging back dislocated limbs, Nature herself is working out 
the primal curse which doomed the tenderest of her crea- 
tures to the sharpest of her trials, but the fierce extremity 
of suffering has been steeped in the waters of forgetfulness 
and the deepest furrow in the knitted brow of agony has 
been smoothed forever. M 

At the growing news of the success of the discovery arose 
a host of claimants, chief among whom was a professional 
competitor in dentistry, a Dr. Jackson of Boston. 

He claimed to have given Dr. Morton the general idea of 
ether as a safe means of insensibility to pain September 28, 
1846. 

After exhaustive investigations, the summoning of wit- 
nesses on both sides to give testimony as in a law court, and 
hearing the principals themselves, the trustees of the Mas- 
sachusetts General Hospital, a board of twelve gentlemen 
of highest standing in Boston, reached a verdict — a verdict 
which unqualifiedly gave the discovery to Dr. Morton, and 
laid aside as utterly unproven the claims of Dr. Jackson. 
The unanimous report in which this verdict confirmed Dr. 
Morton's discovery was issued January 6, 1848. 

The famous Dr. Bowditch for the entire staff of the hos- 
pital followed the report with a ' ' Vindication ' ' of the ver- 
dict of the trustees. Thus the combined weight of all pro- 
fessional evidence was thrown on the side of Dr. Morton. 

The reports of trustees and the staff ended with this con- 
clusion: "Dr. Morton, previous to his interview with Dr. 
Jackson, had bought sulphuric acid, and was concerned 
about its qualities, especially its effects when inhaled, for 
the prevention of pain in dental operation, etc.; in other 
words, that Dr. Morton was seeking for this discovery by 



108 MASTERMINDS 

means of this agent and did not get the first idea of using 
it from Dr. Jackson." 

As time went on, the hospital staffs of New York, Phila- 
delphia and elsewhere confirmed Dr. Morton's claim as the 
verdict of organized science. 1 

Their judgment is sustained by the sifted evidence of 
science to-day. 

Every year leading scientists and surgeons in the United 
States gather and celebrate the birthday of the discovery 
of ether. In 1908, October 16th, the latest verdict of 
science, 2 to which we have already referred, was ably voiced 
by Dr. William H. Welch, M. D., LL.D., chair of pathology, 
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, who concluded : 

' ' I deem it, however, fitting and only historical justice to 
say that, after careful study of the evidence, the greater 
share of the honor belongs to Morton. ' ' 

Dr. Welch credited to the fullest possible degree 
the claims of Dr. Crawford W. Long of Jeffer- 
son, Georgia, who asserted he had removed a tumor 
in 1842 from a man he had anaesthetized by ether. 
He also credited to the full the claims of Dr. Jack- 
son, even admitting the possibility of Jackson's pre- 
vious conversations as to "pure ether," and his personal 
experiments four years before. Yet what he decided of 
Dr. Jackson he in these words decided of Dr. Long: "We 
cannot assign to him any share in the introduction to the 



i"The great thought is that of introducing insensibility, and for 
that the world is, I think, indebted to you." — From a letter of 
Nov. 17, 1847, from Sir J. ¥. Simpson, Edinburgh, who this year 
(1847 ) discovered chloroform as an anaesthetic. 

2The candid and able address before referred to as voicing modern 
science is published in full in the Boston Medical and Surgical Jour- 
nal, November 5, 1908. 



WILLIAM MORTON 109 

world at large of the blessings of this matchless discovery." 
"There is good evidence that Morton, while reaching out 
for all the evidence and assistance he could obtain from dif- 
ferent sources, acted independently and conducted experi- 
ments and tests with ether upon his own initiation and in 
accordance with his own ideas. The supposition appears to 
me irreconcilable with the facts that he was merely a hand 
to execute the thoughts of Jackson." . . . "The glory 
belongs to Morton's deed in demonstrating publicly and 
convincingly the applicability of ansesthetic inhalation to 
surgical purposes." 

But Dr. Jackson refused to abide by the Massachusetts 
General tribunal or further submit his case. 

Henceforward he became chief of a number of con- 
spirators against Dr. Morton in a train of attacks which 
do not close till Dr. Morton drops dead of heart disease in 
New York, some twenty years later. 

Not merely individuals, but organizations of dentists, 
opposed him and adopted systematized opposition to the 
use of ether and bitterly attacked Dr. Morton, planning to 
prosecute whomsoever used it. 

The loss professionally to Dr. Morton's practice, which 
had amounted to so many thousands a year, was complete. 
Coupled with his having left it to his assistant, to whom 
he turned it over in order to prosecute and perfect his dis- 
covery, this professional persecution did much in time to 
decrease the number of patients. Between 1847-1858, 
counting the amount he expended for the laboratory and 
apparatus needed for the discovery, and the loss of income, 
he sacrificed one hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. 

In 1848, while yet in his twenties, being twenty-nine, as 
he was brooking the professional opposition which broke 
upon him, he sustained an even heavier loss — that of his 



110 31 ASTER MINDS 

health. This now collapsed under attacks of neuralgia, 
whose needle-like prickings left him trembling and 
despondent. The breathing of ether fumes, necessary in 
the process of the discovery, had undermined his powers of 
resistance to this attack and found him ill prepared to 
fight it. 

The other claimants to the discovery arose and claimed 
they had used it even as far south as Georgia. But none 
had used it with effect in cases as severe as surgical opera- 
tions, and indeed had they used it at all, could summon no 
satisfactory evidence, could record no satisfactory demon- 
stration, could point to no public reception and practice in 
any section of the country. 

Among these claims was that for Dr. Horace Wells 
of Hartford, whose demonstration of nitrous oxide gas for 
killing pain in the extraction of a tooth had resulted in a 
total failure. The claim was that, notwithstanding he used 
a different drug, and that even for a tooth its demonstra- 
tion was a failure, yet Dr. Morton got his idea from him. 

Slight and immaterial as they were, the real evil result 
of these false claimants now becomes apparent. They 
became obstructionists. They blocked the Government's 
compensation of Dr. Morton's discovery, and for fourteen 
years they pulled the wires of politics in their own sections 
to prevent his claim being passed by Congress. 

Dr. Morton's patent to exclusive right was applied for 
October 27, 1846, and was issued November 12, 1846, and 
signed by the Secretary of State. Its terms gave him 
sixty-five per cent, of the net profits for a term of fourteen 
years. 1 



lAt first, told by the Patent Office that any person joining even 
slightly in the discovery must join in the application, and frankly 



WILLIAM MORTON 111 

Either help must be had from the Government as com- 
pensation for his one hundred and eighty-seven thousand 
dollars expended and lost as a sacrifice to his ether discov- 
ery, or Dr. Morton would find himself in beggary and no 
roof over his family's head. It was for this, not for mer- 
cenary reasons or greed, that he decided to ask the Govern- 
ment to compensate him. 

The patent the Government in the Mexican War itself 
broke, and allowed to be broken everywhere. Hence there 
was to be no recompense from royalties. Yet Dr. Morton 
refused to bring suit. He had originally issued the patent, 
chiefly to keep unauthorized people from misusing his dis- 
covery and so throw it into disuse and public disfavor. As 
the patent was now, however, everywhere broken, he no 
longer eared to prosecute its infringement. All that 
remained was to secure sufficient compensation for his debt 
to keep his home from the auctioneer's hammer, his prac- 
tice from being trusteed and himself from bankruptcy and 
writs of execution. 

But this compensation was never to come ! 

For fourteen years, hounded by creditors, and pursued 
by counter-claimants, he sought at the doors of Congress 
by bills and memorials to cover the debt he had contracted 
in the discovery. 

He sought justice. 

But "republics are ungrateful." For no less than 
six Congressional committees admitted his claim, or 



admitting his conversation with Dr. Jackson, Dr. Morton was advised 
by Commissioner of Patents Eddy to include Jackson's name in the 
application. Later, looking over the evidence, the Commissioner 
rescinded his decision on the ground that he had overrated Jackson's 
grounds for joining in the discovery. He thereupon granted the 
exclusive right to Dr. Morton. 



112 MASTER M INDS 

refused to admit the claim of any other to the discovery of 
ether. Yet for selfish reasons, and on account of sectional 
political pressure from the regions of other claimants, each 
Congress held back the vote of the appropriation he asked. 
Kept on the balance-rock of expectancy and disappoint- 
ment for fourteen years, Morton was encouraged to go to 
Congress each time right up to the brink of a passed bill. 
Then at the last moment, after even the Congressional com- 
mittee in almost every case had voted for it by majority 
report, he had to see it referred or laid over ! 

Thus acted the Twenty-eighth Congress on the vote of a 
select committee in the second session; the Thirty- 
second Congress on the majority report of the Naval Com- 
mittee of the House of Representatives; the Thirty-second 
Congress on the majority report of the Military Committee 
of the Senate ; the Thirty-second Congress on the majority 
report of the Naval Committee of the Senate (second ses- 
sion) ; the Thirty-second Congress on the majority report 
of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives 
(first session), and the Thirty-seventh Congress on the 
majority report of the Military Committee of the Senate 
(third session). 

Bandied about, referred back and forth, the bill or 
memorial, though always voted by majority reports of 
committees, became the football of Congress, but one never 
to reach the goal. 

No man of like deserts was ever grilled on a Govern- 
mental gridiron for so long a time or grueled to such pro- 
longed and excruciating mental torture. He was again 
and again held off, but kept on dragging his worn form to 
Congress, enthused to try again and again by the highest 
scientific backing of all the United States as led by Boston 
and New York hospital staffs. 



WILLIAM MORTON 113 

In 1854 Daniel Webster wrote him as follows : 

Washington, December 20, 1851. 
Dr. W. T. G. Morton. 

Dear Sir: In reply to your letter of the 17th instant, I would say, 
having been called on a previous occasion to examine the question 
of the discovery of the application of ether in surgical operations, 
I then forwarded the opinion, which I have since seen no reason to 
change, that the merit of that great discovery belonged to you, and 
I had supposed that the reports of the trustees of the hospital and 
of the committee of the House of Representatives of the United 
States were conclusive on this point. 

The gentlemen connected with the hospital were well known to me 
as of the highest character, and they possessed at the time of the 
investigation every faculty for ascertaining all the facts in the case. 

The committee of the House were, I believe, unanimous in accord- 
ing to you the merit of having made the first practical application of 
ether, and a majority of their report accorded to you the entire 
credit of the discovery. 

Very respectfully your obedient servant, 

Daniel Webster. 

Rufus Choate, Charles Sumner and Edward Everett 
decided upon the same conclusion with like arguments — but 
in vain. 

After the second application and its issue was lost, Mor- 
ton, dispirited and crushed, left for home to become prey to 
a severe illness, and for thirty days hovered between life 
and death. But this was just the beginning. Year after 
year, as his fight for his rights went on, he was to receive a 
like crushing blow by four more congresses. 

The defense of his discovery from false claimants was 
practically settled, the committees of Congress, in agree- 
ment with the best scientific verdict of the country, always 
voting by a good majority the discovery as his. The halt- 
ing-point of Congress was the request for a compensation 
for the money he had drawn from his business to put in his 
8 



114 MASTERMINDS 

discovery. For this, however, he had to fight on because, 
behind his back, threatening him and getting yearly more 
and more pressing, were debt and the assault of the ever- 
increasing army of creditors. 

Arriving at his office one day, he found that his enemies 
and his creditors had spread the report of his great outlay 
and his consequent slowness to pay. This instigated a 
"run." While he was away, they stole his books, took the 
names of all his patients, and sent them dunning bills, also 
trusteeing their salaries in case of non-payment. These 
notes were sent to not only patients who had not paid, but 
to those who had. On his return, offended numbers of his 
former patients met him with cold stares, and, thinking he 
had sent the bills, refused to speak to him, and cut off their 
patronage. His health, already broken, grew worse. More 
and more harassed in his practice, in 1853 he retired from 
it altogether. 

But the inquisition was not yet over. 

It was now to make its home-thrust nearest the heart. 

At Wellesley, Massachusetts (then West Needham), 
twenty miles from Boston, Dr. Morton had established 
his home. By arboriculture and landscape gardening, 
transforming abandoned farms, he made the wooded knoll 
on which his house stood the centre of an estate of pastoral 
charm and quietude. Cultivating the trees and shrubs 
about it, he left a perspective looking from the knolls far 
away across to the village church in the distance. Close 
by was the little cottage near which he had chosen for the 
last living resting-place of his white-haired parents. 

But even here invaded his persecutors, and, returning one 
day, he found his wife and children had retreated to the 
nursery and locked the doors, owing to a strange man who 
had forced his way in and seated himself in the parlor. He 



WILLIAM MORTON 115 

was a man who had come to act as "keeper" and to attach 
the house and everything in it! 

But all, all, had to go. Even this Morton had to admit 
to his wife. 

To "Washington and home again, and back again to "Wash- 
ington, he began now his desperate journey as his last 
resort. 

The stock left on the farm he sold and leased the estate 
itself for five hundred dollars. 

His previous cabinet of instruments and scientific appa- 
ratus he put in pledge for two thousand dollars. He then 
fell ill again with an alarming attack. 

At this juncture he was kept fourteen months waiting 
for the Government's decision. It ended as before, with- 
out result, and he now gave up all hope. 

Nearly beside himself, he decided to return for the last 
time from "Washington and face his creditors. 

Attachments were raced upon him. Execution writs and 
sales rapidly succeeded one another. Matters grew worse 
and worse. At length his family and little ones were hooted 
on the streets. "Worst of all, his aged parents he had to tell 
to get out of their cottage. 

"The discovery, indeed," as Dr. Morton's son, Dr. "Wil- 
liam James Morton, has said, "while a boon to the world, 
was a tragedy to its author and his family. ' ' 

To keep off actual starvation, Dr. Morton looked around 
for what was left, and saw a load of wood on his wood- 
pile. It is, indeed, easier to freeze than to starve. He 
therefore piled the wood on a cart, carried it to a baker and 
exchanged it for one-half a barrel of biscuit. 

In 1857 Boston friends, headed by Amos Lawrence, 
issued an "Appeal to the Patrons of Science and the 
Friends of Humanity." The Massachusetts General Hos- 



116 MASTERMINDS 

pital had already in 184S presented Morton as a memorial 
a silver casket in which was one thousand dollars, and on 
which was written, "He has become poor in a cause which 
has made the world its debtor." 

It was signed by the noble and great of the day, and con- 
firmed by the signatures of the staffs of the great hospitals 
in Boston, New York, Brooklyn and other cities. 

Thus buoyed up by the best in the land, he lived till ten 
years later, when he was stricken with an apoplectic shock 
July 15, 1868, while driving with his wife in New York, 
aged only forty-eight. 1 At St. Luke's Hospital, whither at 
midnight he was carried, the chief surgeon gave one look, 
turned to some students, and declared: "Young gentlemen, 
you see lying before you a man who has done more for 
humanity and for the relief of suffering than any other 
man who has ever lived. ' ' 

Besides the monument in Boston Public Garden in com- 
memoration of the discovery is the monument over Dr. 
Morton's grave in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, erected by the 
people of Boston and thus inscribed : 

William T. G. Morton 

Inventor and revealer of Anaesthetic inhalation 
Before whom, in all time, surgery was agony 
By whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled 
Since whom science has control of pain. 



iA keen touch of pathos is added to this event by the fact that 
Dr. Morton had left his Massachusetts home to go to New York to 
reply to an attack on his discovery by Dr. Jackson — this stroke, 
therefore, being the last in the train of all the others literally to 
kill him. 



WILLIAM MORTON 117 

Up to his death, instead of being embittered, he main- 
tained his interest in humanity and his love of country and 
of the race, as was shown by his visits to the fierce fields of 
the Battles of the Wilderness in the Civil War, whose hun- 
dreds of thousands of wounded in this and other campaigns 
of that war lapsed from desperate pain into gracious insen- 
sibility through the discovery he had made. Here, broken 
in health as he was, to prepare wounded patients for the 
knife, before the operators followed and the dressers bound 
up the stumps, he produced perfect anaesthesia in a few 
seconds and became a volunteer surgeon. It came about in 
this way : 

The time was the early summer of 1864, — the place the 
Wilderness of Virginia. An aide approached headquarters 
and announced that a civilian doctor wished to obtain an 
ambulance for visiting field-hospitals. 

' ' The ambulances are only for the sick and wounded, and 
under no circumstances can be taken for private use, ' ' was 
the curt reply of General Grant. 

Dr. Brinton, who was on Grant 's staff of surgeons, sought 
the applicant and found him a broken, travel-stained man 
in a sadly worn suit of brown clothes. Discovering his 
identity, Dr. Brinton returned to General Grant and 
repeated the aide's request, but elicited only the same curt 
answer. 

"But, General, if you knew who that man was I think 
you would give him what he asks for. ' ' 

"I will not divert an ambulance to-day for any one. 
They are all required elsewhere." 

' ' General, I am sure you will give him the wagon ; he has 
done so much for mankind, so much for the soldier, more 
than any soldier or civilian has ever done before, and you 
will say so when you know his name." 



118 MASTERMINDS 

General Grant took his cigar from his mouth, poised it 
between his fingers, looked curiously at the applicant and 
asked, "Who is he?" 

1 ' He is Dr. Morton, the discoverer of ether. ' ' 

Pausing a moment, Grant weighed his words and 
declared : 

"You are right, Doctor. He has done more for the sol- 
dier than any one else, soldier or civilian, for he has taught 
you all to banish pain. Let him have the ambulance and 
anything else he wants ! ' ' 





Dorothy Lynde Dix 
Rertemptress of the World's Insane 



DOROTHY DIX 

REDEMPTRESS OF THE WORLD'S INSANE 



OVER the central portal of Memorial Hall at Harvard 
University is set a stand of the United States 
National colors. 

What patriot do they commemorate? What heroic act? 
What dear-won victory? What blood-bought cause? 
Not that of a hero, but a heroine; not that of a soldier, 
but a saint; not that of a fighting man in uniform, but of 
an American unveiled Sister of Mercy — Dorothy Lynde 
Dix. 

As a testimonial of that which she had done as it cul- 
minated in her acts of mercy in the Civil War, what 
should it be? Should it be by Congressional vote a for- 
tune of many thousands of dollars ? Or, as tendered by the 
War Cabinet at Washington, should it be the ovation of a 
national mass meeting? Which, asked the Cabinet, 
did she prefer ? 

"Neither!" 

"What, then?" 

"The flags of my country" were all she asked, and of 
such are the flags at Harvard. 

Signal as is the distinction of this memorial to Dorothy 
Dix, under which daily troop thousands of the country's 
best young blood and which, though that of a woman, 
heads the sacred mementoes in that hall of fame dedicated 



120 MASTERMINDS 

to the quick and the dead, it stands second to far greater 
memorials — memorials unspeakably grander than even 
this. Built by her work, thirty and two memorials (now 
grown to over three hundred) she saw rear their roof- 
trees throughout the length and breadth of the Union. 
Twice did they break over the line into Canada. Carried 
by her, they crossed the Atlantic to more than one great 
pile in England and Scotland. The Pacific they were to 
cross in time, even to far-away Japan. Under the shadow 
of the Vatican, through her plea, they became entrenched 
in the "Eternal City" of Rome. 

Just what are these memorials? They are none other 
than the colossal hospitals for the world's insane. These 
hospitals when as yet they were not, this little woman, an 
invalid, broken in body, alone and unattended, founded 
and promoted. To use her own title to her task, 
her life's masterpiece lay in her career as "Champion and 
Challenger of the Insane. ' ' 

Doubly well do those colors dedicated to Dorothy Dix 
stand over the vestibule of a temple largely dedicated to 
fighters; for the entire life of this frail lady in grey was 
a fight from first to finish. And of the truly great, 
whether men or women, is there any life worth remember- 
ing where it has not been so? Differences bridged are 
the pontoons to success. And across this bridge have 
walked all the immortals. Weak characters evade these 
differences. Merely strong characters quarrel with them. 
But great characters use them as the way to triumphs they 
could never have achieved had it not been for such differ- 
ences thus bridged. 

"The tonic I need," once said Dorothy Dix when laid 
low by sickness, "is the tonic of opposition. It always 
sets me on my feet." 



DOROTHY DIX 121 

HER DIFFERENCE WITH HER HOME AND HER IMPULSE FOR AN 
EDUCATION 

Of this tonic there was plenty. Her first difference was 
with her home. ' ' I never knew childhood, ' ' was her ver- 
dict upon the usual eare-free age of from one to twelve. 
She was born in Hampden, Maine, in the year 1802. 1 

Concerning her father's household, her heart never, it 
is true, registered anything but an aching void. In it was 
desperation. Yet desperation proves a form of inspira- 
tion if instead of to things wicked and small it drives 
to things worthy and great. 

In the city of Worcester, where her father moved 
soon after her birth, such was her keen mind that 
before twelve she perceived her home but a sinking ship 
to which she was tied down, together with her father, 



iMuch question has existed as to the place and time of Miss Dix's 
birth, an event about which she was always reticent. But whatever 
certainty has existed is dispelled by the birth records given in the 
following letter to the author: 

Hampden, Maine, 
Sept. 21st, 1909. 

Dear Sir: Your letter of the 20th at hand, and have in my pos- 
session the town records of Hampden, marked on edge of outside 
cover dated 1792, and in tracing the book along to record of births 
came across the following word for word and a true copy: 

"Joseph Dix and his w ' fe Mary their children Born. Dorothy 
Lynde their daughter Borne April the 4th, 1802." 

Have shown your letter to the following persons, who have seen 
the records, and swear to its being correct: 

J. L. Miller, 

Mrs. Ella E. Rowe, 

E. H. Bowell, Town Clerk. 

Arthur W. Braithwaite, 
Postmaster. 



122 MASTER M INDS 

Joseph Dix, already up to the arm-pits in debt, her mother 
a hopeless invalid, and her brothers, doomed with her to a 
life of dependence, poverty and ignorance. So absorbed 
was the head of the family with his habit of peddling tracts 
which he kept Dorothy home to sew, that the education of 
his family, the bills of his creditors, the health of his wife, — 
all had to be sacrificed. Ignorance and the poor-house, 
towards which they were tending, stung Dorothy's little 
soul and goaded her spirit to shake itself free, escape, 
run away, be educated, then return to the sinking ship 
and save all that she could! Such was the moving 
impulse under which she acted. That conditions were 
such she had to do so was always an open wound. 

As to others disgruntled with home life and anxious to 
imitate the form and not the spirit of her action, Dorothy 
Dix punctuates their folly with a full stop, begging them 
to love a home and make one. 

"No! Let them fall in love, marry and preside over a 
home. It will be a thousand times better for them." 

In the home she left to return later to save, Joseph Dix, 
Dorothy's father, had, by the time the girl was' twelve, 
already since her birth been through more than "the 
three moves" which Benjamin Franklin has said are as 
bad as fire. He had by 1814 little but his pack of tracts 
over which the child was constantly bending to stitch and 
paste. 

At the mysterious age of change between twelve and 
thirteen, when the Head of Humanity himself felt the 
driving instinct which made him run away from home 
ties and be about "his Father's business," she, too, felt 
that first stirring of a divine impulse and also fled away. 
Her landing-place was likewise a temple of Truth, a 
place for hearing teachers and asking them questions. 



DOROTHY DIX 123 

The Boston home of her grandfather, Dr. Elijah Dix, 
was still held by her grandmother, a veritable Puritan, 
whose home, mentally speaking, was an arsenal of Crom- 
wellian missiles. Hither Dorothy turned her steps. 
Dame Dix received her to the mental and moral rigors of 
her training. The sword was not too sharp for the scab- 
bard. For it Dorothy's hungry, starved mind was 
ready. Iron hit iron. Skipping one generation the metal 
of Elijah Dix's moral and mental constitution was 
repeated in the grandchild. 

There was no doubt about its existing in her grand- 
father. Years before, while Elijah Dix lived in Worces- 
ter in a house 1 near the present Court House at Lincoln 
Square, a decoy call came at night summoning him to the 
bedside of an imaginary patient, on his way to which the 
plan was to waylay him in ambush. Thus trapped, the 
trick of the conspirators was to drive him from Worces- 
ter. The antagonism of his iron will and the unyielding 
purpose with which he relentlessly pursued certain enter- 
prises had raised up enemies. Among the enterprises 
which they derided was the planting of Worcester shade- 
trees, an idea of which he was the father, and which 
made him a butt of ridicule. The turnpike from Boston 
to Worcester was also among the things of which he was 
promoter. In his civic work this uncompromising stand 
for conviction had made him a target, and the shaft this 
night fell at his door. 

Divining danger, he did not quail, but threw up the 
window and called out to his stable-boy in loud tones: 



iNow moved to No. 1 Fountain Street. It is the house to which 
the patriot Warren's wife and children came for shelter during the 
Eevolution. 



124 MASTER MINDS 

"Bring round my horse, and see that the pistols in my 
holsters are double-shotted ; then give the bull-dog a piece 
of raw meat and turn him loose ! ' ' 

It is enough to say he was unmolested. 

The iron of such courage in her grandfather was by a 
kind of spiritual carbon to be carbonized in Dorothy into 
finer steel. The high-strung nerve which allowed her to 
eye calmly the muzzle of a desperado 's pistol, look out of 
countenance the slur of low politicians, and again and 
again tame a maniac 's wild stare, was to be hers by divine 
right. In her it was the trinity of that triple courage 
which is physical, moral and spiritual. 

Dame Dix therefore could not break it, though she was 
strenuousness personified and a speaking image of Puri- 
tanism at its strictest. Her Puritan forebears had left 
Charlestown when it was set in flames by British fireballs, 
only to return from Worcester to Boston concentrated in 
her — a composite picture of them all. The little slip of 
the old tree found her book and bell good discipline, 
however, and the virgin stock was not bent but toughened 
into "a dread of a secret desire to escape from labor 
which, unless hourly controlled, will overcome and 
destroy the best faculties of our mind and paralyze our 
most useful powers." This conviction in 1812-1814, 
Dorothy later affirmed, became enfibred in her very 
being. She was thus endowed with a constitution that 
could endure seventy years of high-keyed labor eighteen 
hours each day! 

HER DIFFERENCE WITH THE OLD PURITANISM OF LAW AND HER 
QUEST OF THE NEW LOVE-LIGHT OF CHARITY 

Yet there was an extreme in all this — an extreme which 
drove her to a desperation which led, like all her despera- 



DOROTHY DIX 125 

tions, to an inspiration. In this step she advanced to a 
quality which Puritanic Elijah Dix and Dame Dix never 
knew. 

No good-night kisses, no stories to warm the imagina- 
tion, no affection to melt the heart or warm the nature in 
the stately Dix mansion ! A special indulgence granted 
as a prize was the making under Dame Dix's eye of an 
entire shirt, not one stitch of which could vary from the 
other "by the width of a micrometer." Under this and 
the pressing intellectualism of Boston's school life, Doro- 
thy's heart was starved to feed the mind and will. 

"An enemy to all enthusiasm," is a line of eulogy at 
Copp's Hill on an old Bostonian's tombstone of an early 
day. 

But the girl refused to be such an enemy and to stifle 
heart and imagination. In 1816, coming back to Worces- 
ter after two years of such training, at the age of four- 
teen, it seemed as though the vise of iron about her frail 
frame and mind had pressed out these higher and finer 
traits. Her little Worcester pupils later recalled, along 
with her excellent teaching, the cold dignity with which 
like a pillar of chilled steel she stood erect over their 
desks irresponsive to the more playful and tenderer heart- 
strings of a child. Such may have been a true impres- 
sion, but she was not to remain chilled steel. If she had 
ever been frozen music, the music was now to melt in the 
great Boston revolt from a cold lovelessness. 

By 1816 this reaction, led by Channing, was at its 
height. From a holy selfishness she chose now without 
casting away the Puritan ideal of holiness, the lovelight 
of selflessness. 

This melting of the old Puritanism of law into the 
new Pilgrim spirit of love made of the two a mag- 



126 MASTERMINDS 

nificent combination. There was a flux of both. As the 
new fires of humanitarianism reflected their glow against 
the stiff Dix mansion and into her room, in place of a 
society that drew its skirts from the other half as outlawed, 
she welcomed the new leaning toward mercy and the 
searching out of earth's friendless and afflicted. 

An aristocratic day and boarding school she was set 
over by Dame Dix. It contained the daughters of Bos- 
ton's mast select and exclusive. Dorothy's ability and 
drawing powers upon this quarter enabled her to gratify 
her desire to relieve financially her father's load. This 
she did by taking her two brothers to Boston to educate 
and start in business, one to become commander of an 
American vessel, the other a successful Boston mer- 
chant. 

To Dr. Daniel Tuke, the English alienist, she confided 
later in life that up to this time she had been determined 
"to live to herself, to enjoy literature and art" — in other 
words, to be a useless vestal of culture instead of an un- 
veiled sister of mercy. 

Happy the change ! 

Happy the time when to return to her own beautiful 
confession she "discovered the fatal mistake and deter- 
mined to live for the good of men. The suffering to 
be comforted, the wandering led home, the sinner 
reclaimed! How can any fold their hands, rest and say 
to the spirit, 'Take thine ease, for all is well'?" 

Into the cold intellectual anasmia of the Boston patri- 
cian flushed the warm Christ-blood of the new passion. 
But it abode as no mere lovely emotion. 

There was the old Dix barn. Why should she not 
begin here? Fit this up? Gather and educate free the 
children of the poor who were shut out of private schools ? 



DOROTHY DIX 127 

Dame Dix's hauteur at the thought of down-trodden, 
miserable waifs and gamin coming under the stiff lines 
of the Dix mansion, the girl disarmed by this plea. 

"Let me rescue some of our America's miserable chil- 
dren from vice and guilt. Do, my dear grandmother, 
yield to my request and witness next summer the reward 
of your benevolence and Christian complaisance." So 
searching was the plea explaining all the motives and 
dwelling on all the good, good to the poor, the miserable, 
the idle, the ignorant, that Dame Dix at last conde- 
scended. 

With this consent we mark Dorothy Dix bridging her 
second difference — a difference with the over-sternness 
of the grand old Puritanism. Keeping its holiness she 
walked with all its iron-sharded power over into the lists 
of earth's afflicted whose cause she was at once to chal- 
lenge and to champion. 

The bridging of such a difference was a pontoon to a new 
success. It was her life's career. Not so much when amid 
Boston's Four Hundred in the Dix mansion, but as she 
touched the hearts of the wretched in the barn, her pen- 
tecostal gift and tongue of fire were revealed ! 

HER DIFFERENCE WITH HER HEALTH AND THE SECRET OF HER 
TRIUMPHANT CONSTITUTION 

But just here on the eve of this discovery came a third 
difference to meet — a difference with her health, 
a difference to bridge which she had to combat all her 
life. At fourteen, when she taught school for two 
years in Worcester, it was evident that the tall slip 
of a girl who had just lengthened her skirts and 
put up her hair was to run the gauntlet with death. 
Such sharp pains stabbed her in the side that even then 



128 MASTER MINDS 

she had to hold to a bench for support as she clasped her 
waist. By 1826 the consumptic symptoms attacked her 
voice so that it became noticeably husky. Pumped into 
the brain out of the body, there to be exhausted, it seemed 
as if her blood was prey to the white plague to a degree 
no mortal could withstand. 

Her vicarious talks with the girls in the day school fol- 
lowed, with heart-searching interviews, a Saturday-night 
question-box which she turned into a confessional. To all 
this many a girl owed her making. But to the teacher 
apparently it was her un-making. 

Every day it was her habit to get up at daybreak 
— at four in summer, at five in winter, and remain at 
work till midnight. 

Suction on nerve and system from the night work of the 
Charity School was an additional tax, enough to collapse 
the physique and eclipse the career of a giantess, to say 
nothing of her frail frame. 

That the inroad of the disease did not snap the iron in 
her soul and break it completely was indeed a miracle — 
a miracle, however, whose secret lay in her wonderful 
connection with the Source of power. Though she arose 
at four in summer and five in winter, one whole hour she 
spent alone in the morning watch with her Bible. There- 
fore could she write: "The hour of bodily suffering is to 
me invariably the hour of spiritual joy. " " It is happiness 
to feel progression and to feel that the power that thus 
aids is not of earth." 

To such a soul even sleepless nights unlocked new pleas- 
ures, and the star-studded constellations, otherwise unseen, 
sang to her, as she lay wakeful, the music of the spheres. 

In 1827 she began a series of journeyings with the 
family of Dr. William Ellery Channing, who was also in 



DOROTHY DIX 129 

search of health and had chosen Miss Dix as governess of 
his children. For six months of spring and summer she 
suffered the sea-change of Rhode Island's shore, where 
Dr. Channing had a country seat, and where her sonl 
also enjoyed the marvelous sea-walk to which the illus- 
trious Channing owed such inspiration. Marine life and 
the rich flora of the Rhode Island and Providence planta- 
tions exposed also to her keen eye an apocalypse of 
nature's secrets. 

The winters Miss Dix spent for several successive sea- 
sons in Philadelphia, and Alexandria, Virginia. Here 
she was kept alive by not only the milder clime, but by 
healthful spirits engendered, as they always are, by new- 
born purposes. In 1824 she wrote a crystallization of her 
inner musings, entitled "The Science of Common 
Things." It reached afterwards sixty editions, and was 
followed by seven books on the higher life. 

In 1830 she visited the West Indies, landing at St. 
Croix with Dr. Channing 's family and meeting her first 
shock from the slavery system. Overcoming the inertia 
of the tropics, which she confessed laid her rebellious self 
flat on a sofa, by sheer triumph of will she shook it off 
and arose from a languor in which "one," as she said, 
"does nothing, is nothing, thinks nothing," to study the 
system of slavery, whose "creatures cannot be Christians, 
cannot act as moral beings and for whom none can pay 
the awful price but those who have hidden from them the 
bread of life." 

Returning to Boston by 1836, her day school financially 
and academically a success, she gave her real heart's 
blood to her Charity School. Hemorrhages, a hectic 
flush and chest-pains marked her as one of those who die 
of having lived too much. The currents, mental and 
9 



130 MASTERMINDS 

soulful, that for five years had so overdriven the mill- 
wheels of her physical life-stream, now compelled her to 
leave both schools and spend eighteen months 
with cultured sympathizers in England. Thence she 
returned to find her poor mother dead in New Hampshire, 
and her proud grand-dame dead in Boston. 

HER DIFFERENCE WITH THE WORLD *S NEGLECT OF THE 
DEMENTED AND HER CONQUEST AS " CHAMPION 
AND CHALLENGER OF THE INSANE" 

A new difference now was to arise, the greatest dif- 
ference of her life, the difference that led to her great 
discovery and bridged her way to her career. It was a 
difference, the friction of which was to catch and generate 
into power a spiritual electricity that unlocked new layers 
of energy. This difference was with the world's barbaric 
neglect of the insane. 

"Woe, woe, if thou dost not champion these outcast and 
miserable ones!" 

This call of the prophetess, greater than which there has 
never been any, planted Dorothy Dix's feet on the world- 
wide bridge of sighs to the shunned sphere of the demented. 
In Christ's day their sphere was in the Perea — the be- 
yond. So was it still in Dorothy Dix's day. The insane 
existed and died apart, in a land beyond human sympathy 
and human care and human love. 

It came to her in this way. Knowing her reputation 
as an authority and expert in charity work, which began 
in her barn school, a Cambridge divinity student, who 
had failed to reach the women of the Cambridge jail, 
came to see Miss Dix, who was now much sought in Bos- 
ton. 



DOROTHY DIX 131 

"I shall take them myself," she replied. 

To the young clergyman's expostulation she simply 
added: "I shall be there next Sunday!" 

Among the prisoners was a group of insane, and par- 
ticularly noticeable were two women with no fire to warm 
them, planked in, and caged by a stone wall all winter from 
November to March. The elder was a hag shrieking 
curses at the younger, who was but a slightly irrational 
girl. 

To Dorothy Dix it became but a focal point from 
which to see ten thousand times ten thousand similar 
cases all over the world. 

But were all insane so beyond the pale of human mercy ? 
Relying on no impulsive judgment which might be due to 
a woman's hypersensitiveness, she investigated. 

Two silent years of intensest activity followed. At 
every keeper's door, at every poor-house and jail in Mas- 
sachusetts, there her frail hand knocked. 

From Cambridge jail to the Berkshires, from Province- 
town to Fitchburg, the trim little woman in white linen 
and grey traveled alone. Into a note-book she jotted 
down specifically and exactly what she saw. None dared 
deny her entrance. The fire of a spirit willing to be 
martyred if necessary gleamed in her eye and convicted 
by its determined gaze. Twenty-four months were thus 
consumed when, like the apparition of an ancient seer, 
she appeared at the Legislature of Massachusetts — not 
with the hysteria of a sentimentalist, but armed with 
facts — facts scientific, proved, articulate; facts compelling 
and uncontestable. She spoke not a word in public from 
the rostrum, but with that delicate feminine instinct that 
at once disarmed opposition she worked in private, chose 
the mouth-pieces of her facts, then charged upon Senate 



132 MASTER MINDS 

and House with the irresistible calibre of her loaded 
memorial. Drawn up in it were the points she had taken 
over seven hundred laborious days to collate and which 
she thus prefaced : 

"I tell what I have seen, painful and shocking as the 
details are, to prevent the possibility of repetition or con- 
tinuance of such outrages upon humanity. I proceed, 
gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of 
insane persons within this Commonwealth — in cages, 
closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with 
rods and lashed into obedience." 

Beasts without souls, disenspirited bodies — so were the 
insane as a whole regarded in America. Save at one or 
two semi-private places of detention, the ancient con- 
ception of the demented still prevailed, a conception 
which believed them possessed with devils and no longer 
human. 

In 1792 Philippe Pinel, the father of alienists, confronted 
by the municipal pit into which the metropolis of Paris, 
France, threw its bedlam of insane, cried to the heads of 
the Commune : 

"Off with these chains — away with these iron cages 
and brutal keepers. They make a hundred mad men 
where there was one. An insane man is not an inflex- 
ible monster. Underneath his wildest paroxysms there 
is a germ at least of rationality. To believe in this, to 
seek for it, stimulate it, build it up — here lies the only 
way of delivering him." In answer iron doors whose 
hinges had corroded for generations upon creatures with- 
in were knocked off, manacled chains had their battered 
screwheads wrenched away, and haggard, grey-headed 
wild men walked out to see the blue sky and to become 
as little children. 



DOROTHY DIX 133 

In 1796 William Tuke in England, the path-breaker 
among English alienists, did the same thing, changing the 
London Amphitheatre of maniacs from a museum of 
curios every one went to visit as a human zoo to what was 
in the real sense of the word, ll a retreat." 

Coming upon such an inspiration quite independently 
as we have seen, Dorothy Dix became the apostle in 
America of this revolution, universalizing here and 
throughout the world what the other reformers had 
started in their own municipality. 

Charles Sumner headed the memorialists who presented 
Dorothy Dix's monograph of facts. Behind him were 
such other memorialists as Samuel Howe, Horace Mann, 
Drs. Palfrey and Charming, and Superintendents Bell of 
the McLean and Woodward of Worcester. Calling the 
roll of county after county, her recital presented its cham- 
bers of horrors: — 

" Dan vers!" — Exposed were 60 inmates; witness one — 

"She had passed from one degree of violence and deg- 
radation to another in swift progress ; there she stood 
clinging to or beating upon the bars of her caged apart- 
ment, the contracted size of which afforded space only 
for increasing accumulations of filth. There she stood 
with naked arms and disheveled hair, the unwashed 
frame invested with fragments of undergarments, the air 
so extremely offensive that it was not possible to remain 
beyond a few moments without retreating for recovery to 
the outward air. Irritation of body excited her to the 
horrid process of tearing off her skin by inches. All, all, 
coarse, brutal men, wandering, neglected children, old 
and young, each and all, witnessed this lowest, frailest 
state of miserable humanity. And who protects that 



134 M ASTER MINDS 

worse than Pariah outcast from other wrongs and blacker 
outrages ? ' ' 

"Sandisfield!"— 

"A pauper young woman, a raging maniac — a cage of 
chains and a whip were the agents for controlling her, 
united with hard tones and profane language. Annually 
with others she was put up at auction!" 

By chance a kindly man had taken this poor soul and 
knocked off the rust-encrusted chains. The result showed 
what could be done — the making of a frenzied maniac a 
being docile and at peace, calling her benefactors "father 
and mother." 

"Groton!"— 

"A wooden building upon the roadside of heavy boards 
and planks! No window save a hole closed by boards! 
A young man, with a heavy iron chain, in an iron collar, 
wintered from November to April with the hole closed 
with boards in darkness and alone!" 

"Shelburn!"— 

"A lunatic pauper. A stye of rough boards. The 
inmate stirred with a stick ! The food pushed through a 
loose board! A bed a mass of filth! No fire!" "He's 
cleaned out now and then, but what's the use?" 

"Newton!"— 

"Woman furiously mad — she rushed out the length of 
the chain almost nude, belching out filthy words to by- 
standers." 

"Worcester!"— 

"A lunatic pauper of decent and respectable family, 
outraged in the almshouse, later with an infant in arms." 



DOROTHY DIX 135 

These present but an average of her dreary catalogue 
of Massachusetts insane penned in poor-houses or 
auctioned off and farmed out. 

The memorial concluded : 

1 ' Men of Massachusetts, I beg, I implore, I demand, pity 
and protection for these of my suffering, outraged sex. 
Fathers, husbands, brothers, I would supplicate you for 
this boon. Here you will put away the cold, calculating 
spirit of selfishness and self-seeking, lay off the armor of 
local strife and political opposition; here and now, for 
once forgetful of the earthly and perishable, come up to 
these halls and consecrate them with one heart and mind 
to a work of righteousness and just judgment. Gentle- 
men, I commit you to this sacred course. Your action 
upon this subject will affect the present and future condi- 
tion of hundreds of thousands." 

Seated for consultation in an out-of-the-way alcove, the 
modest author of the memorial never appeared upon the 
floor. Nevertheless, here as in state after state, she 
became the storm-centre round whom raged the wrath of 
keepers, selectmen and politicians. Her memorial was 
referred to a committee. Sumner, Howe, Mann, Bell and 
Woodward confirmed her point of view as even an under- 
statement of facts. The committee's report came back 
citing additional cases of maltreatment and an appeal for 
legislative action. Brought to vote under pressure of 
public opinion, previously as always preinformed and 
educated by Miss Dix's editorials and contributions, the 
bill was carried by a majority, and. the first step taken 
was to build quarters for two hundred more insane at 
Worcester. 

Facts collected at the southern boundaries of Massachu- 
setts apprised Miss Dix of similar conditions in Connecti- 



136 MASTERMINDS 

cut and Rhode Island. Doing the duty at hand always 
commands the larger beyond and over the line into 
other states Dorothy Dix is to go on till her experience is 
to be repeated in thirty-two states of the Union, then and 
since then to be reproduced and yet again reproduced the 
world over. 

The first case over the border-line was in Ehode Island 
in Little Compton. A man was imprisoned in a square 
six by eight, clapped behind a double wall and two iron 
doors. Here he was — buried alive without fresh air and 
light, half an inch of frost coating the inner stone ivalls, 
his comfortable of straw frozen stiff with drippings, thawed 
only by his panting breath, a sheet of ice his covering! 

"He's here," said the mistress to Miss Dix, warning the 
lady in grey to stand back lest he spring out and kill 
her as she went down into the underground hole. 

"I took his hands," said Miss Dix, who had ignored the 
warning, "and endeavored to warm them by gentle fric- 
tion. I spoke to him of release, of care and kindness. A 
tear stole over his hollow cheek." 

Hereupon Miss Dix stumbled over a chain in the dark, 
linked as it was to an iron ring on the creature's leg. 

"My husband in winter," called the keeper's wife from 
her safe position without, "rakes out sometimes of a 
morning a half bushel of frost and yet he never freezes ! ' ' 

Publishing the case to melt the public mind, Miss Dix 
planned the Rhode Island attack, pre-arranging friends of 
the measure, the getting of whom she always made the 
crux of the campaign. 

Chief of these men was a Mr. Cyrus Butler. But upon 
her appearance he dodged the issue. 

"Mr. Butler, I wish you to hear what I have to say. I 
want to bring before you certain facts involving terrible 



DOROTHY DIX 137 

suffering to your fellow creatures around you — suffering 
you can relieve. My duty will end when I have done 
this and with you will rest all further responsibility ! ' ' 

Then followed the recital, beginning with the man in 
the frost-coated pen. 

"Miss Dix," said Mr. Butler at length, "what do you 
want me to do?" "I want you to give $40,000 towards 
the enlargement of the insane in this city. ' ' 

"Madam, I'll do it." 

The psychological moment in Rhode Island was thus 
won beforehand and the back of private opposition 
broken. 

Given confidence by this success in Massachusetts and 
Rhode Island, Dorothy Dix saw the horizon lift, and felt 
inspired to a campaign whose field was the United States 
and the world! So far she had worked with the feeble 
beginnings of one or two semi-private plants, such as 
existed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She was to 
conquer now a world — a world almost destitute of any 
insane retreat — a world foreign even to the idea. 

In such a world New Jersey afforded this first point of 
action. 

Instead of a foolish bombardment upon reacting sympa- 
thies, Miss Dix as usual spent months in a patient collec- 
tion of facts in every jail and poor-house. 

Winning a leader in Hon. Joseph S. Dodd, she advanced 
the attack by laying less accent than before upon the 
cruelty of keepers and more upon the positive "way out," 
pointing to something better in the place of that which 
she could only elsewise condemn. This positive treat- 
ment grew upon her and worked with increasing effect. 
She quoted in her recountal such types as that of a female 
whose marred limbs were rutted by year-old iron, and 



138 MASTER MINDS 

who said: "I could curse those who chain me like a brute 
beast, and I do, too; but sometimes the soft voice says: 
' Pray for thine enemy. ' ' ' 

Another voice was that of a manacled old judge who, 
though for years a noted jurist among them, was now 
quickly forgotten. 

"I am all broken up, all broken up," he wailed, clasp- 
ing his chains. 

In answer to the question, "Do you feel much weaker, 
judge ? " he moaned, ' ' The mind, the mind, is almost gone ! ' ' 

Armed as it was with many such heart-piercing resur- 
rections of their own acquaintances, this was the result of 
the Dix memorial to the Legislature : 

"We can only report what is better said by Miss Dix, 
which presents the whole subject in so broad a manner as 
to supersede further remarks." 

One by one wavering legislators were brought before 
the quiet woman in drab, only to go out — won ! 

Daylight was spent in such resultful work, yet by night 
Miss Dix sat in the hotel parlor as hostess of circles of 
legislators, to whom she outlined her plans. 

One, a country member, had declared, "The wails of 
the insane are all humbug. ' ' But after an hour and a half 
audience he concluded : 

"Ma'am, I bid you good-night. I do not want, for my 
part, to hear anything more. The others can stay if they 
want to — I am convinced. You've conquered me out and 
out. I shall vote for the hospital. If you can come to 
the House and talk as you have done here, no man that 
isn 't a brute can withstand you ! ' ' 

March 25th, 1845, came the unanimous passage of the 
bill for the establishment of the New Jersey Insane Hos- 
pital — the first full-fledged triumph — a hospital built on 



DOROTHY DIX 139 

no other's foundation. But it was a triumph we are 
to see her reproduce again and again. Under the roof- 
tree of this New Jersey Hospital she was to choose her 
place to die. But that day was forty-two years off, and 
this triumph of a hospital built on no other's founda- 
tion was in this time to be reproduced in over twenty 
American commonwealths before it leaped the border into 
Canada and crossed the seas into the old world. 

In Pennsylvania it was duplicated at Harrisburg. But 
between sessions in one state Miss Dix was always busy 
in another. For instance : From Lexington, Kentucky, 
as early as 1843, two years before the New Jersey vote, 
Miss Dix recorded this statement: "I have been labo- 
riously traveling through the country collecting facts 
and information." 

Let us imagine the cultured sensitive gentlewoman day 
after day standing in her physical frailty before wild- 
eyed maniacs as the bolts were drawn and the keepers 
retired — a mental and moral queen. And previous to this 
experience day after day recall her, besides fronting the 
coarse stares of hostile keepers, before the meanest and 
lowest, "the party demagogues, shocking to say, the basest 
characters." Yet doors unlocked before the avenger, and 
in her tell-tale note-book the books were opened. Every 
time she entered, Judgment Day had come for the insane. 

"I shall go to the Southern prisons after the Legislature 
arises in this State," was her untiring look ahead. 

Down the Mississippi to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, 
into the State of Mississippi to Jackson; back into Mis- 
souri to Jefferson City; over into Illinois to Alton — thus 
she penetrated the Interior and the South. 

No railroads — and highways all but impassable — she 
was compelled to carry a kit of tools to mend with her 



140 MASTERMINDS 

own skill broken-down wagons as they jousted over cor- 
duroy roads, or sank in black mud to the hub, or forded 
streams with water up to the floor, where once and again 
the horses sank their haunches into sandbars, and axle- 
trees broke as back wheels rolled off in the rapid current. 
On river-boats with burning malarial fever — once on a 
boat blown up by a boiler explosion, — she traveled the 
waterways as the highways, never thinking of self. Upon 
crossing the gang plank her first question was always not 
as to her berth, but — "are any sick aboard?" 

In Michigan she boldly forced her paths across trackless 
wilds of forests. 

"I had hired a carriage and a driver to convey me 
some distance through an uninhabited portion of the 
country," she recorded of this State. "In starting I dis- 
covered that the driver, a young lad, had a pair of pis- 
tols with him. Inquiring what he was doing with arms, 
he said that he carried them to protect us, as he had 
heard that robberies had been committed along our road. 
I said to him: 'Give me the pistols, I will take care of 
them.' He did so reluctantly. 

"In pursuing our way through a dismal-looking forest, 
a man rushed into the road, caught the horse by the 
bridle, and demanded my purse. I said to him with as 
much self-possession as I could command: 'Are you not 
ashamed to rob a woman? I have but little money and 
that I want to defray my expenses in visiting prisons and 
poor-houses, and occasionally giving to objects of char- 
ity. If you have been unfortunate, are in distress and in 
want of money, I will give you some.' 

"While thus speaking, I discovered his countenance 
changing and he became deathly pale. 



DOROTHY DIX 141 

' ' ' My God ! ' he exclaimed. ' That voice ! ' — and imme- 
diately told me he had been in the Philadelphia Peniten- 
tiary and had heard me lecturing to some of the prison- 
ers in an adjoining cell and that now he recognized my 
voice. He then desired me to pass on, and expressed deep 
sorrow at the outrage he had committed. But I drew 
out my purse, and said to him: 'I will give you something 
to support you until you can get into honest employment,' " 

Dorothy Dix's record in three years before 1845, even 
in this bedraggled and dangerous type of travel, was 
over ten thousand miles. Besides her great quest she 
visited in this time state penitentiaries, three hundred 
county jails, five hundred almshouses, besides hospitals and 
houses of refuge. In these thirty-six months alone, she 
succeeded in planting and promoting six hospitals for the 
insane besides a number of county poor-houses and 
improved jails. 

After 1845 the great achievement of founding colossal 
hospitals for the insane where none existed was completed 
in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Mis- 
sissippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Car- 
olina and Maryland. 

"Nothing can be done here," had been the people's 
rejoinder at North Carolina. 

"I reply," said she, "I know no such word in the 
vocabulary I adopt." 

"Kill the bill, stillborn," was the opposition's cry. 

Exposes of conditions recast public opinion, and with 
a previously prepared hold on Hon. James C. Dobbin as 
leader, December, 1848, she found the vote to build, 101 
to 10! 

Constantly an invalid, able to rest only by stealing 
snatches of repose between the long travel stretches, she 



142 MASTERMINDS 

was compelled to stay up till one o 'clock at night in order 
to strike when the iron was hot. When not confronting 
groups of men whose will power she had to handle and 
control, she was writing newspaper broadsides. 

Seldom free from enervation, it was in the South that 
she wrote: "I shall be well when I get to Alabama" (a 
storm-centre of protest). ''The tonic I need is the tonic 
of opposition. It always sets me on my feet." 

"Just one chance that my bill would pass." was her 
comment concerning this Alabama crisis. In 1849, as a 
last blow, the Alabama State Capitol burned. Yet backed 
by her picked leader, Dr. Lopez, and the Alabama State 
Medical Association, one hundred thousand dollars was 
voted, and later one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
more ! The magnanimous act was closely seconded by 
Mississippi with twenty-four majority in the Senate and 
eighty-one in the House — marking a conquest over a pre- 
determination "not to give a dime!" In true Southern 
style the legislators' thanks were followed by that drawn 
up by the commissioners, and not finding this enough the 
Southern great-hearts bestowed upon the institutions 
Miss Dix's name, an honor she has always proceeded to 
refuse. 

That summer — into Canada — but not for rest. 

Canada was seemingly hopeless. 

"I must go by thy faith, for mine is gone," wrote Hon. 
Hugh Bell, the crushed leader of the cause. This was in 
1850. In but a short time Miss Dix's little figure 
stepped in the breach and the Canadian Parliament 
closed with sixty thousand dollars appropriation, fol- 
lowed by twenty thousand dollars more subscribed. 

Punctuated was this period by cheering news from 
other centres of agitation. Baltimore, Maryland, wrote 



DOROTHY BIX 143 

that her bill had passed. Kentucky followed, declaring 
for a hospital at Lexington as well as at Hopkinsville, 
Indiana for the hospital at Indianapolis, Illinois for the 
hospital at Jacksonville, Missouri for the hospital at Ful- 
ton, Tennessee for the hospital at Nashville, North Caro- 
lina for the hospital at Raleigh, Alabama for a hospital at 
Tuscaloosa, and the District of Columbia for a hospital at 
Washington. 

Yet this was not enough. 

"On to Washington!" became her cry. 

Twenty odd State legislatures and Canada already won — 
Congress must be won ! 

In the meantime the few friends of the Army and Navy 
Hospital for the insane were about to give up the fight, 
saying: "There is nothing more to be done." 

"We must try what can be done," was her reply. 

Two days after came an answer to Dorothy Dix's 
plea, from the owner of the coveted but refused site, who 
now offered her the land, "regarding you," as he wrote 
her, "the instrument in the hands of God to secure this 
very spot for the unfortunate whose best earthly friend 
you are, and believing that the Almighty's blessing will 
not rest on or abide with those who may place obstacles 
in your way." 

The Army and the Navy Hospital thus secured, before 
the Federal Congress Dorothy Dix now launched her 
twenty-five-million-acre bill for a land-grant "to promote, 
plant and sustain insane hospitals in the newer states and 
territories." For school purposes one hundred and forty- 
three million, seven hundred four thousand, nine hundred 
and eighty -two acres had already been given, and vast tracts 
to railroads, and deaf and dumb, and blind institutions; 
why should not grants be made the insane ? One sixth of 



144 MASTERMINDS 

the insane of the country were in hospitals, but five sixths 
were outside, in horrors she only too well had discovered 
and thus described : 

"I have myself seen more than nine thousand idiots, 
epileptics and insane in the United States destitute of 
appropriate care and protection. And of this vast and 
miserable company sought out in jails or poor-houses and 
in private dwellings, there have been hundreds, nay rather 
thousands, bound with galling chains, bruised beneath 
fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag-chains, 
lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods, and terrified 
beneath storms of profane execrations, and blows; now 
subject to gibes and scorn and torturing tricks, now aban- 
doned to the vilest and most outrageous violations." 

Congressional action, however, was deferred owing to 
the new Democratic move against land-grabbing, which 
foolishly included such righteous causes as this. At this 
opposition in 1850 Dorothy Dix did not give in, but 
instead characteristically increased the number of acres 
in the bill by twelve million, two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand. In 1851 the Senate passed the act by a large major- 
ity. In March, 1852, it again passed the Senate and in 
August the House ; likewise also her bill for one hundred 
thousand dollars for the Army and Navy Hospital, 

At this time, like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, fell 
upon the Congressional bill for a land grant the remark- 
able and partisan veto of President Franklin Pierce! 

At the crushing news of the veto, Miss Dix sought Great 
Britain as her change of sphere and earth's miserables as 
her counter-consolation, with this motto : — 

"Rest is not quitting the mortal career, 
Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere." 



DOROTHY DIX 145 

In Scotland, south of Edinburgh, six stone cells were 
the only public places of confinement for the insane ! The 
bills of 1848 for the relief and planting of hospitals had 
been lost when America's unveiled Sister of Mercy 
arrived on the scene. 

To every place of detention of the demented came the 
knock of the avenger. The Lord Provost of Edinburgh 
himself headed the opposition. He would indeed even fore- 
stall her appeal to the Home Secretary at London. But 
driving to the first train out of Scotland for London that 
night, she secured her audience hours before the Honorable 
Lord Provost alighted in due dignity from his coach. 
Her interview resulted in the modification of the lunacy 
laws of Scotland, the abrogation of all private money- 
making establishments and the founding of the great new 
general hospitals by Parliament's final vote. This vote 
was consummated August 25th, 1857. 

Debility of heart and physician's cautions could not 
deter Dorothy Dix from the cry from the Channel 
Islands, where many of England's insane were farmed 
out for blood money. As a result of her visit and con- 
fronting the authorities with the conditions, came the 
vote to build instead a great English Hospital for the 
Insane ! 

In Switzerland, the Chamonix, Berne, Oberland, the 
Glaciers and the Cascades could not drown or freeze Miss 
Dix's heart to an ultra-montane cry — a cry from Rome 
itself. Under the shadow of the Vatican she found one of 
the most cruelly neglected of all places for the detention of 
insane. To the noble heart of Rome's Supreme Pontiff she 
went straightway as America's unveiled Sister of Mercy. 
The Pope was transfixed at the exposure. Visiting the 
place secretly in person, his Eminence found it worse than 
10 



146 MASTER MINDS 

described. By his gracious initiative a new asylum on the 
most approved plan soon reared its head. 

In 1856, upon Miss Dix's return to America, she was not 
yet to escape the call of the demented, and she confessed: 
"If I am cold, they are cold. If I am weary, they are dis- 
tressed. If I am alone, they are abandoned." 

After four years came the Civil War, whose bloodshed 
reddened the sunset of her afternoon. Her field of action 
at once was at the front at Baltimore. Here she revealed 
the Southern strategy which contemplated an attack upon 
Washington and the capture of Lincoln. Through the mob 
she pressed to Washington to be appointed Superintendent 
of women nurses. In the awful years of beautiful service, 
in directing nurses to military camps, in supervising their 
service throughout the army, in caring for the thousands 
upon thousands of tons of supplies, what wonder human 
ingenuity sometimes became confused and human power 
to compass the situation fell short ! 

It was said that in those four years she never once sat 
down! 

Grand as her effort, "it is not the work I am to be 
coupled with," was her conclusion. 

Yet her work there was illustrious. 

It was so notable a climax to her career that the United 
States Secretary of War, by vote of Congress and the War 
Cabinet, offered, as we have said, to bestow the recognition 
of either a fortune or a national ovation. Refusing both, 
as we have seen, she chose instead — "the flags of my coun- 
try." 

From now on up to her death in 1887, * under the roof- 
tree of her first-born hospital in New Jersey, her queenly, 

iFrom the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, Trenton, N. J., 
April 20, 1888, from a letter of the superintendent, John W. Ward, 



DOROTHY DIX 147 

unconquerable spirit reigned like a wounded general's. 
Here she spent her remaining strength in supervising the 
insane hospitals of the country and the world. And in "the 
hour of bodily suffering" which for her was "the hour of 
spiritual joy," her life's quest ended in the fulfillment of 
her own prophecy of long ago when she predicted : 

"This is no romance. I shall see their chains off. I shall 
take them into the green fields and show them the lovely 
little flowers and the blue sky, and they shall play witfli 
the lambs and listen to the songs of the birds, and a little 
child shall lead them!'' 



to Hon. A. S. Roe of Worcester, it is stated: "She died about 6 
o 'clock on the evening of July 18, 1887. Her remains were buried in 
the Mt. Auburn Cemetery at or near Boston, Mass. She was under 
my professional care for nearly five years. Her mind was clear and 
vigorous to within a few hours prior to her decease. ' ' 



CLARA BARTON 

FOUNDER OF THE RED CROSS IN AMERICA 

IT is a gracious paradox of Providence that Dorothy Dix, 
Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, the three 
women of the world who have nnrsed more dying men 
and have healed more of earth's scourged and diseased and 
sick and wounded than any other, should all have outlived 
their generation and attained to the age of nearly ninety. 

Florence Nightingale lives to-day in her eighty-eighth 
year, and has just been accorded the freedom of the city of 
London, though, demanding that it go to the needy, she has 
refused the heroic token of that royal ovation — the golden 
casket. 

"If I could give you information of my life," she 
remarked, ' ' it would be to show how a woman of very ordi- 
nary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccus- 
tomed paths to do in His service what He has done in mine, 
and if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done 
all and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is 
all; and I have never refused God anything." 

Strangely parallel, as we have seen, was the working idea 
of Dorothy Dix. But quite as identical is that of Clara 
Barton, who is to-day 1 eighty-eight years of age. 

"You have never known me without work; while able you 
never will," she declares in one of her home messages to 
her friends. ' ' It has always been a part of the best religion 
I had. I never had a mission, but always had more work 

iln 1909. 



150 MASTERMINDS 

than I could do lying before me waiting to be done. ' ' 

So to Clara Barton's career as to the others the point of 
departure is just this — the path of duty. 

She came by it naturally. It was so with her father. In 
the engagements with Indians and British, Barton left his 
chimney-side in 1793 for the side of "Mad" Anthony 
Wayne in the wilds of the Northwestern Territory in 
Indiana and about Detroit. 

The tales of this hero father fell upon the tablets, melted 
and plastic, of Clara 's tender mind while she was yet under 
six years of age. 1 They fell not coldly, but like red-hot iron 
upon wax. Unconsciously but deeply even in those 
days she instinctively became a little sister to the soldier. 

COURAGE THROUGH FEAR OVERCOME 

The truest courage lies in the overcome fear. Such cour- 
age was Clara Barton's. She did not make one of the 
world's greatest trinity of nurses because she was mascu- 
line, because she was devoid of a woman 's sensitiveness, but 
because of a great sensitiveness, not calloused, but chan- 



iThe date of her birth was 1821 — Christmas clay. Strange to 
say, most of the biographical notices of Clara Barton, even such 
standard ones as Appleton's and Harper's, place her birth in 1830, 
nine years afterwards. In a letter of Sept. 30th, Miss Barton 
interestingly remarks : ' ' That error in the date of my birth has 
been travelling about for the last fifteen years or more, from one 
biographical sketch to another. I made strenuous efforts to correct 
and set it right when my attention was first called to it, but it 
was too late; it, like other falsehoods, had gone the world over. The 
publishers could not call it off, and met me with polite, good-natured 
pleasantness, as 'the mistake was all in my favor; if other persons 
did not object, I scarcely needed to;' until I grew discouraged and 
gave it up, excepting to state the truth whenever opportunity pre- 
sented. 

"December 25, 1821, according to the calendar, is correct." 




o S 



CLARA BARTON 151 

neled. Indeed, that sensitiveness in her earlier years was 
her controlling passion. Of those days she now recalls, 
"I remember nothing but fear." In a soul that was 
later to face unflinchingly fields of blood and have shells 
tear the men she held in her arms into fragments, so intense 
was this delicacy of feeling that the accidental sight of the 
butchering of an ox dropped the little girl to the barn-floor 
in a dead faint, and ever since, owing to that day, she has 
refused the taste of meat. 

In overcoming fear lay her pathway from first to last. 

The fear of horses, for instance, at the age of five, she 
controlled. Out in the Oxford pastures, when her brother 
David bridled half-broken colts, he threw her on one, 
jumped on the other, and while she held fast to the mane, 
led off in a wild gallop. 

"It served me well. To this day," she writes as she 
looks back, "my seat on a saddle or on the back of a horse 
is as secure and tireless as in a rocking-chair, and far more 
pleasurable. Sometimes in later years, when I found 
myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper's saddle, 
flying for life or liberty in front of pursuit, I blessed the 
baby-lessons of the wild gallop among the beautiful colts. ' ' 

As to the explosion of the mine before Petersburg, Miss 
Barton related at Worcester, Sept. 21st, 1909, to the 
Twenty-first Regiment, which had made Miss Barton a 
' ' comrade ' ' on the field, the following : 

"One night following the battle of the mine, there was a party 
of horsemen rode up to my place. They drew apart and talked 
among themselves for five minutes. Now and then they looked in 
my direction, I noticed, but I did not look at them. One of them 
finally stepped out of the party and, approaching me, said: 

" 'Miss Barton, I have some bad news.' 

«' 'What is it?' I said. 



152 MASTERMINDS 

" 'The mine has been blown up,' said he. 'We have lost a great 
many men, and Gardner (a friend of Miss Barton) was among them.' 

" 'Is he killed?' I asked. 

" 'Yes,' said he. 

"I was asked if I wanted to go to the mine, and said yes, and 
the troop of horsemen offered to accompany me there, some twenty 
miles, but I said that one would be enough. It was a fearful night, 
and late. It was terribly dark. We had no way of keeping one 
another in sight, except for our horses. 

' ' One horse, which was mine, was black, and the other was white. 
It was a long twenty-mile ride. The thunder was terrific and the 
lightning fearful. When the lightning came we were able to distin- 
guish one another and see where we were going. The rain com- 
menced almost immediately. 

' ' The horses became frightened. True they did not run, but they 
stopped stock still. They would not budge an inch. They stayed in 
one spot there for three or four hours shivering from the effects 
of the elements. When the rain subsided and the daylight came, 
we resumed our way. 

"At the mine we found everything in confusion. There were a 
great many killed there. We knew they were there at the mine, but 
we were not permitted to enter where they were then. ' ' 

Her conscience naturally shared this general sensitivity 
of her nature. Concerning an early accident due to dis- 
obedience and stealing away to skate on Sunday, she con- 
fessed: "My mental suffering far exceeded my physical. 
I despised myself, and failed to sleep or eat. ' ' 

"Her sensitive nature will always remain," was the 
criterion of Fowler, the phrenologist who once visited her 
home. "She will never assert herself for herself, but for 
others she will be perfectly fearless." In fulfillment of 
this prophecy is her own admission when she says : " To this 
day I would rather stand behind the lines of artillery at 
Antietam or cross the pontoon bridge under fire at Fred- 
ericksburg than to be expected to preside at a public meet- 
ing." 



CLARA BARTON 153 

Over against the delicacy of such a temperament, all the 
greater, as we proceed, grows upon us the bravery which, 
while, on the one hand, it demanded in the midst of earth's 
worst terrors that she control this sensitivity, yet, on the 
other hand, by it was kept sweet and feminine. 

With this delicacy very naturally went a mental keen- 
ness. So searching was her agile mind that while yet a 
primary pupil, early winter mornings she awoke her sis- 
ters to trace places on the map. So small was she at this 
time that she had to be lifted up and carried to school 
through the snow-drifts upon her brother 's shoulders. 

When eight years old, she entered Colonel Stone's 
Oxford Plains High School. 

Back home again but a little bundle of nerves, she was 
wisely left for a while to the development that comes from 
life out of doors on her father's three hundred acre farm. 
Feeding ducks, milking cows, riding saw-logs, racing 
through primeval pines, grinding paint, mixing putty, 
hanging paper, in this industrial training and in the 
atmosphere of play and animal pets, lay chapters of her 
education fully as important as any other. 

HER POINT OF DEPARTURE, THE PATH OF DUTY 

By the time she was eleven, her brothers had caught the 
mill-fever and engaged in building mills on the French 
River — first saw-mills, later mills for the manufacture of 
satinet. 

It happened that one of these brothers, David, fell at a 
barn-raising from the top to the bottom. Leeches and 
bleeding did little for the resulting fever, and for two 
years Clara gave up all to stay by her brother's side, char- 
acteristically rendering not only "first aid," but last aid 



154 MASTERMINDS 

and aid all the time "to the injured." The only intervals 
of relaxation lay in the reading from the poems of Scott 
and the Great Poets of England. But who can say that 
this which seemed from an educational standpoint a wasted 
epoch, was not the pivotal epoch on which turned her 
career, the epoch in which she discovered herself and her 
genius ? 

How much this path of duty proved a point of depart- 
ure to her destiny as one of the world 's three Unveiled Sis- 
ters of Mercy, God only knows. 

"It was an accidental turn," she to-day declares, 
but ' ' an accidental turn that changed my entire course. ' ' 

The following few years of schooling led her mind up to 
the mysteries of chemistry, Latin, philosophy, and the 
usual eye-opening books of an advanced high school. Yet 
her teachers' personalities were the chief educational asset, 
for they were sterling worthies as rich in character as in 
instruction. 

Like Lucy Larcom, though not like her because she had 
to, Clara Barton democratically and voluntarily joined the 
group of American girls among her brothers' mill-hands. 
Here as a satinet- weaver she mastered "the evenly-drawn 
warp and the swiftly-flying shuttles." 

In contrast to mill-life the Barton home was the centre 
of culture for the community, a roof-tree for visiting lec- 
turers, literati and clergymen. 

"She has all the qualities of a teacher. Give her a 
school to teach," was the advice of one of these. 

So at fifteen she began to teach at District No. 9, forty 
pupils, some of whom were as tall as their teacher. Like 
Dorothy Dix, to look older she lengthened her skirts and 
put up her hair. Yet whether it be in the interpretation 
of the Beatitudes before school, or in drilling a lesson or 



CLARA BARTON 155 

leading in play at recess, she awakened a chivalry in the 
noisiest boys that won the day. Even by them her depart- 
ure, at the age of fifteen, after the all too quickly ending 
year, was greeted with sobs. In similar manner the teach- 
ing of other schools followed in her native town. 

After a course of study at Clinton Liberal Institute, New 
York, Miss Barton followed up her successful school ven- 
ture by a harder test at Bordentown, New Jersey. Great 
prejudice existed against a free school. "A pack of row- 
dies," was up to this time the verdict of the people. Men 
teachers had failed; how could she succeed? Failure 
beforehand was predicted. 

Nevertheless she volunteered to give her services for three 
months, just to show that she could do it. 

Herein was her stock principle of success. Appearing in 
the midst of others ' failure, she converted doubters by show- 
ing not words, but a way. 

Six pupils in a crazy shack of a school-room she in- 
creased in a year's time to six hundred pupils in a 
large edifice erected for her. Bordentown 's streets became 
filled not with idle and vicious children as before, but with 
hundreds of attendants upon a model school. 

In 1854 recommended to the Commissioner of the United 
States Patent Office, the next epoch of her life takes her to 
Washington, D. C. The several years she remained here 
she was indispensable not only for her business ability, but 
because of her honor, a quality greatly needed at that time, 
owing to the stealing of inventions by employees. 

The male clerks, to whose eyes she was an interloper, 
ranged themselves in rows each day, leaning against the 
walls, whistling softly as eyes on the ground and, uncon- 
quered, she passed by. Day after day she ran the gauntlet 
till the bolder clerks, venturing lying slanders, were dis- 



156 MASTERMINDS 

missed, "for the good of the service," as ring-leaders of 
disorder. 

"WHAT IS MONEY IF I HAVE NO COUNTRY?" 

In 1861 came the war. 

The Government was financially embarrassed. Could she 
help? Yes; she could give up her salary for her country 
and do, unpaid, the additional work of two disloyal clerks 
as an act of patriotic free grace. 

To the querulousness of friends who demurred at her 
generosity, she answered, several years later: "What is 
money if I have no country ? ' ' 

In the spirit of this rejoinder she was now to act. She 
met at the train the wounded from the first clash at Balti- 
more, supplied the men with food, and from the Pres- 
ident's desk in the Senate Chamber, where they were quar- 
tered, acquainted them with the bulletins of the fight from 
which they had come. 

The letters home of the soldiers soon overflowed her 
rooms with supplies, which she transferred to warehouses. 

Filled with heartaches at the news and scenes from the 
front, she left Washington and hastened to her father's 
Massachusetts home in Worcester County, where she con- 
fided her resolve to go personally to their aid, and elicited 
this reply from the old veteran : 

"Go, if it is your duty to go. I know what soldiers are, 
and that every true soldier will respect you and your 
errand." 

But the wounded men on Potomac boats stirred her to go 
beyond the lines. 

"No place for a woman!" This curt prohibition con- 
fronted her. Eed-tape blocked her way. Point-blank the 
officers refused to let her cross the lines. 




Clara Barton 

(From the portrait taken of her in her regulation field costume at the height 

of her service in the Civil War, and authorized I>y her) 



CLARA BARTON 157 

Going straight to the Assistant Quartermaster General of 
the army, she described the swamps of Chickahominy, 
where soldiers were weltering in their own blood, which 
dried upon unattended wounds already quite matted with 
mud and filth. In tears, he gave his consent and supplied 
transportation. 

Leaving organized circles of women at the Capitol, at the 
front Clara Barton entered the lines — alone. 

"the angel op the battlefield " 

Through the eyes of her contemporary, Lucy Larcom, 
"we may look back and catch a glimpse of her in the dark- 
ness of the rainy midnight bending over a dying boy, who 
took her supporting arm and soothing voice for his sister 's ; 
or falling into a brief sleep on the wet ground in her tent, 
almost under the feet of flying cavalry ; or riding in on her 
train of army-wagons toward another field, subduing by 
the way a band of mutinous teamsters into her firm friends 
and allies ; or at the terrible Battle of Antietam (where the 
regular army supplies did not arrive till three days after- 
ward), furnishing from her wagons cordials and bandages 
for the wounded, making gruel for the fainting men from 
the meal in which her medicines had been packed, extract- 
ing with her own hand a bullet from the cheek of a 
wounded soldier, tending the fallen all day, with her throat 
parched and her face blackened by sulphurous smoke ; and 
at night when the surgeons were dismayed at finding them- 
selves left with only one half-burnt candle amid thousands 
of bleeding, dying men, illuminating the field with candles 
and lanterns her forethought had supplied. No wonder 
they called her 'The Angel of the Battlefield.' 

"We may see her at Fredericksburg attending to the 
wounded who were brought to her, whether they were the 



153 MASTERMINDS 

blue or the gray. One rebel officer, whose death agonies she 
soothed, besought her with his last breath not to cross the 
river, betraying to her that the movements of the rebels 
were only a ruse to draw the Union troops on to destruc- 
tion. It is needless to say that she followed the soldiers 
across the Rappahannock, undaunted by the dying man's 
warning. And we may watch her after the defeat, when 
the half -starved, half-frozen soldiers were brought to her, 
having great fires built to lay them around, administering 
cordials and causing an old chimney to be pulled down for 
bricks to heat and warm them with, while she herself had 
but the shelter of a tattered tent between her and the 
piercing winds." 

Such were the times when her gown was dyed with the 
blood of fallen soldiers whom she again and again raised to 
administer cordial to their lips. 

At Fort Wagner's siege, ill in a tent, she was begged to 
retire to Port Royal. Fifteen hundred men had fallen in 
an hour. There was no good water. It was fiercely hot. 
The air was heavy with malaria. Morris Island, a grave- 
yard, was occupied successively by Southern and Union 
troops, and raked by all the forts, including Sumter and 
Wagner. 

' ' Do you think I will leave here during a bombardment ? ' ' 
she replied. There she stood her ground, bandaging and 
saving from death all she could, whether bleeding generals 
dragging the stump of shot-off legs, or slaves with arms 
torn to shreds. 

General Voris of Ohio thus recalls his final deliverance 
at her hands : 

' ' I was shot with an enfield cartridge within one hundred 
and fifty yards of the fort, and so disabled that I could not 
go forward. I was in an awful predicament, perfectly 



CLARA BARTON 159 

exposed to canister from Wagner and shell from Gregg and 
Sumter in front and the enfilade from James Island. I 
tried to dig a trench in the sand with my sabre, into which 
I might crawl, but the dry sand would fall back in my face 
about as fast as I could scrape it out with my narrow imple- 
ment. Failing in this, on all fours I crawled toward the 
lee of the beach. A charge of canister all around me 
aroused my reverie to thoughts of action. I worked my 
way back on hands and knees like a turtle for two hundred 
yards. ' ' 

Found and carried to shelter he awoke, he recalls, as 
from a rapturous dream of his wife soothing his pain, to see 
Clara Barton bathing his temples and fanning his fevered 
face. "With his leg shot away, but for her he would have 
died. 

It is the observation of another general that Miss Barton, 
rather than abandon a desperately wounded boy, once came 
very near falling into the hands of the enemy. The inci- 
dent occurred at the retreat of Pope during the several 
days' fighting at the second Battle of Bull Run. 

"Miss Barton was about stepping on the last car convey- 
ing the wounded from the field, with the enemy 's cavalry in 
sight and shot and shell from their guns falling into our dis- 
ordered ranks, when a soldier told her there was left 
behind in the pine bushes, where he had fallen, a wounded 
young soldier that could not live, and that he was calling 
for his mother. 

"She followed her guide to where the boy lay. It was 
growing dark and rainy. She raised him up and quietly 
soothed him. "When he heard her voice, he said in his 
delirium : ' Oh, my mother has come. Don 't leave me to die 
in these dark woods alone. Do stay with me. Don't 
leave me. ' 



160 MASTER MINDS 

"At that moment an officer cried out to her: 'Come 
immediately or you will fall into the hands of the rebels. 
They are on us.' 

"'Well, take this boy!' 'No,' said the officer; 'there 
is no transportation for dying men ; we have hardly room 
for the living. Come quick ! ' 

' ' ' Then I will stay with this poor boy ; we both go or both 
stay ! ' 

"Both were therefore taken on the car and the wounded 
boy carried to one of the Washington hospitals, where 
his New England mother found him, nursed him and closed 
his eyes in death." 

Years later, at the time of the Charleston 1 earth- 
quake, she reviewed the old-time battle-scenes off 
Morris Island by the side of the very Southern 
officer who had raked the Northern army with 
shot and shell. Just afterwards with the same hand 
that under the impulse of the moment she had 
shortly before joined with the officer's, she wrote this mis- 
sive, to go to the reunion of the Yates Phalanx of Illinois: 
"Tell them as I stood in the dismantled dome of Charles- 
ton Orphan House and looked over the bay upon the glit- 
tering sands of Morris Island, I found us all there again; 
and that in memory I saw the bayonets glisten; the 
'swamp angel' threw her bursting bombs, the fleet thun- 
dered its cannonade, and the little dark line of blue trailed 
its way in the dark to the belching wails of Wagner. Tell 
them from me what you will not of yourself, that I saw 
them on, up and over the parapets into the jaws of death, 
and heard the clang of the death-dealing sabres as they 
grappled with the foe. I saw the ambulances laden with 



iSouth Carolina. 



CLARA BARTON 161 

agony and the wounded slowly crawling- to me down the 
tide-washed beach, Voris and Cumminger gasping- in their 
blood; heard the deafening clatter of the hoofs of 'Old 
Sam' as Elwell madly galloped up under the walls of the 
fort for orders. I heard the tender, wailing fife, the 
muffled drum and the last shots as the pitiful little graves 
grew thick in the shifting sands ! ' ' 

But to follow Clara Barton through the scenes and crises 
through which she passed in the Civil War would be to 
reproduce many of the campaigns themselves. 1 

Suffice it to say that her post always lay at the front and 
that she remained always the same, "The Angel of the 
Battlefield." 

In 1864 General Butler placed her as head of the nurses 
of the hospitals in the Army of the James. 

After the war, bushels of letters asking for missing men 
led her to assuage grief at many thousands of homes by 
organizing her kindly service into the system of the 
"Bureau of Eecords for Missing Men." 

At Andersonville alone, all but four hundred of thir- 
teen thousand graves were identified. 

It was in the midst of this errand of mercy that, scolded 
by friends at her expenditure of her own, she quietly said : 
1 ' What is money, if I have no country ? ' ' 

Four years Miss Barton devoted to this Bureau. 

In 1869 rest in the Alps proved not a "quitting the mor- 



iThe battlefields in the American Civil War where Miss Barton was 
most active included: Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, 
the siege of Charleston (where she served eight months), Morris 
Island, Fort Wagner, Petersburg, about Richmond, and in the battles 
of the Wilderness. In addition to these are the European wars, 
the Spanish War, and the great national disasters. 

11 



162 MASTERMINDS 

tal career," for at this time there burst upon Europe the 
horrors of the Franco-Prussian War (1870). Against its 
bloodshed a great vision opened to Clara Barton. It was 
the Red Cross. 

Five years before, the Red Cross Society had been 
founded at Geneva, its object the lessening of war's hor- 
rors by rendering neutral, surgeons, chaplains, the wounded 
and their bearers, also hospitals and supplies. The United 
States was not among the signatory powers. 

This fact stabbed her heart with pain she could not for- 
get. But at the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War 
Miss Barton's strong executive hand and organizing brain 
found plenty to do. The twenty thousand homeless at capit- 
ulated Strasburg she eared for and furnished forty thou- 
sand garments. Hundreds of demoralized women groveling 
in cellars she brought out again to the light. With the 
Grand Duchess Louise of Baden, who had turned her castles 
into hospitals, she became a co-worker. 

The decorations of the Golden Cross of Baden were 
pinned on her breast by the Grand Duchess, and the Iron 
Cross of Germany by the Emperor, her father, a decoration 
given only to the brave in battle. These with the Servian 
Red Cross presented by Queen Natalie of Servia, together 
with jeweled decorations from the Crown of Spain, the Sul- 
tan of Turkey, the Czar of Russia, the government of Bel- 
gium, and many others, are among the many outward tokens 
by which Clara Barton recalls these battlefields of the 
world. 

She was at the storming of Metz and with the wounded at 
Sedan. She also distributed food at the Commune in Paris 
(1871-2) when in a riot, though the mob overcame the po- 
lice, they greeted her with the acclamation: 

"God! It is an angel." 



CLARA BARTON 163 

HER VISION OF THE RED CROSS 

But through it all, in the light of the revolution it had 
effected as to the wounded in war, nothing could erase from 
Clara Barton's consciousness the Red Cross. It came up 
before her as especially vivid as she saw its absence in 
America. In the whole world, indeed, previous to the 
treaty of Geneva, the wounded had no rights; neither had 
the sick. This was a factor of even more crying significance, 
for even up to the late Japanese War, ten deaths from 
disease to one of violence is the ratio of fatalities. 

Now, by this treaty, the sick as well as the wounded and 
their attendants, under the Red Cross flag, were equally 
neutral, and subject to the same care the captors gave their 
own. 

At the time of this vision of the Red Cross which thus 
arose, "I thought," said Miss Barton, "of the Peninsular 
Campaign, of Pittsburg Landing, Cedar Mountain, and Sec- 
ond Bull Run, Antietam, old Fredericksburg with its acres 
of snow-covered and gun-covered glacis and its fourth-day 
flag of truce, of its dead, and starving, wounded, frozen to 
the ground, and our commissions, and their supplies in 
Washington with no effective organization or power to go 
beyond ; of the Petersburg mine with its four thousand dead 
and wounded and no flag of truce, the wounded broiling in 
a July sun, the dead bodies putrefying where they fell. As 
I saw the work of these Red Cross societies in the field, 
accomplishing in four months under their systematic 
organization what we failed to accomplish in four years 
without it — no mistakes, no needless suffering, no waste, no 
confusion, but order, plenty, cleanliness, and comfort wher- 
ever that little flag made its way, a whole continent mar- 
shaled under the banner of the Red Cross, — as I saw all 



164 MASTERMINDS 

this and joined and worked in it, you will not wonder that 
I said to myself: 

' ' ' If I live to return to my country, I will try to make 
my people understand the Eed Cross and that treaty.' But 
I did more than resolve ; I promised other nations I would 
do it, and other reasons pressed me to remember it." 

Several years of suffering came as an inevitable reaction 
from the American and European campaigns. Nearly one 
year Miss Barton lay bedridden in the fogs and smoke of 
London. Back to America in 1873 to lie two years more 
a helpless invalid, she forgot the use of her limbs in walking. 
She may have forgotten how to walk, yet the purpose and 
the promise to establish the Red Cross in America she 
never forgot. 

At her recovery, anxiously backed from abroad by the 
members of the International Committee of Geneva as the 
last hope, she was able in 1876, with letters from its Presi- 
dent, to lay the matter before the United States Govern- 
ment, but without success. 

Then ensued five years of hard, incessant labor on her 
part before it ended in persuading the government to join 
the thirty-one great states of the world that had signed the 
Red Cross treaty of Geneva. Upon the refusal of the Cab- 
inet at Washington to adhere to the Geneva Convention, on 
the 21st of May, 1881, Miss Barton called a meeting at the 
Capitol. On the 9th of June she summoned a second meet- 
ing, solemnly setting forth the critical question of the Red 
Cross for America. The same day President Garfield 
made Miss Barton President of the Society for the United 
States. 

In March, 1882, President Arthur signed the treaty of 
Geneva. Clara Barton thus became the founder of the Red 
Cross in America. At once adopted by the Senate and 



CLAEA BARTON 165 

ratified by the International Congress at Berne, it 
entrenched forever the Red Cross in this country. 

Referring to the linking of the United States to the chain 
of international societies of the Red Cross, the President of 
that assembly, at Geneva, September 2, 1882, thus charac- 
terized the event: "Its whole history is associated with a 
name already known to you — that of Miss Clara Barton. 
Without the energy and perseverance of this remarkable 
woman, we should not for a long time have had the pleasure 
of seeing the Red Cross received in the United States. ' ' 

In the United States but four lines in an obscure corner 
of the Washington Press proclaimed the event. But in 
Europe the streets of the cities of France, Germany, Switz- 
erland and Spain blazed with celebrant bonfires. There 
afresh they had learned in suffering what they "taught in 
song. ' ' The United States was yet, as to the Red Cross, to 
learn its lesson. Here the Red Cross, so obscure at first, 
was not to grow upon the people until it rushed to the 
relief of National disasters and later to its work in the 
Spanish- American War. 

Disasters soon came. But before them, for a year, by 
request of the Governor, Miss Barton's hand and head were 
needed for double duty at the Reformatory for Women at 
Sherborn, Massachusetts. 

There convicted outcasts fell under the spell of her per- 
sonality, a good example of which occurred when, for 
instance, an inmate pushed her way out of the bushes in the 
garden where she had been put to work, startling Miss Bar- 
ton to demand : ' ' What is it ? " 

"I heard you coming," was the only reply, "and I just 
wanted to look at you ! ' ' 

Taking the place of superintendent of a State institution 
with hundreds of convicts, doing the work of the man secre- 



166 MASTERMINDS 

tary and treasurer in addition, as in all the confusing 
accounts that came in war and disaster, Miss Barton 's bud- 
get was found to tally to a detail. 



THE RED CROSS IN NATIONAL DISASTERS 

Soon began the train of national disasters which brought 
the Red Cross into greatness in America. In the year of 
1881 occurred the Michigan forest-fires, when a large section 
of the State was afire. As President of the Red Cross, Miss 
Barton acted at once, readiness being the watchword of her 
organization. 

Starting as usual with the contents of her own purse, she 
occupied the field through her agent, Dr. Hubbell, who later 
became a field veteran in every catastrophe, and remains a 
veteran yet by her side to-day. 

Miss Barton first awoke the Senators to the situation and 
then she filled the press with broadsides. Society at large 
she thus got well under way to forward field relief and 
supplies to the stricken State. 

On the ashes of this disaster the Red Cross arose aflame 
with recognition and fame. 

In 1883, while still at Sherborn, came the floods of the 
Mississippi and Ohio, met also through Red Cross agencies. 

In 1884 came still greater floods in the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi valleys. To these Miss Barton went in person, with 
a force of efficient help, chartering steamers, of which she 
took command herself. She plied the swollen waters with 
supplies of relief to people from Cincinnati to New Orleans, 
feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and rescuing the 
stock left to starve on the banks and levees. Later, as the 
water subsided, she sheltered the thousands of homeless. 



CLARA BARTON 167 

Ready money for instant relief, no paid officers, no 
solicited funds, no red tape, instantaneous action, — with 
these fundamental principles, quick steps could he at once 
taken. This system it was that allowed Miss Barton in her 
chartered steamer, piled to the hurricane-deck with sup- 
plies, to run down the swollen Ohio, feed victims at second- 
story windows, and clothe and give fuel to thousands 
"wringing their hands on a frozen tireless shore." From 
side to side, from village to village, steamed the relief-boat 
for eight thousand miles, distributing one hundred seventy- 
five thousand dollars' worth of supplies, leaving the 
drowned-out inhabitants agape with wonder and tear- 
stained with gratitude. For months Miss Barton kept her 
boats plying to and fro, ministering to the malarial, the 
homeless and the sick, and scattering among them ten thou- 
sand dollars' worth of seeds and implements with which 
they might start again. 

Following the example of St. Louis and Chicago, relief 
circles everywhere formed, even groups of children, all 
sharing the contagious passion to join the work of relief. 

' ' All the country knows what you have done, and is more 
than satisfied, ' ' wrote the United States Secretary of State. 

Thus awakened at last to the scope and greatness of the 
Red Cross, in 1884 the nation appointed four delegates to 
the International Red Cross Conference at Geneva. 

In 1885 midwinter startled the country by drawing back 
the curtain upon many thousands of American people on 
the verge of starvation in- Texas. Lured to settle by a rail- 
road which had muzzled the press, these settlers were left to 
die in cold, famine and wretchedness. In person Miss Bar- 
ton visited the stricken district, then appeared before the 
editors of the Dallas papers, who confessed they had been 
blinded, and stood aghast at her exposed They at once 



168 MASTERMINDS 

struck off a new edition of the evening papers embodying 
her exposure, and as a result one hundred thousand dollars 
rolled in for the relief of the sufferers. 

In 1887 the International Red Cross at Geneva again 
called the attention of the United States to the Fourth 
International Conference to be held at Carlsruhe by invita- 
tion of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden. 
Delegates were sent, always of course as a necessity, includ- 
ing Miss Barton as the indispensable "esprit de corps." 

In 1888 cyclones at Mt. Vernon, Illinois, found Miss Bar- 
ton on the field even while the inhabitants stood yet dazed 
and stupefied. 

' ' The pitiless snow is falling on the heads of three thou- 
sand people who are without homes, without food or cloth- 
ing and without money ! ' ' 

This message vibrating on the wires from Illinois from 
Clara Barton was enough to accumulate almost instantly 
ninety thousand dollars ' worth of supplies. 

Now came a new call. Yellow fever broke out in Florida 
and led Miss Barton at once to organize immune nurses and 
physicians to see the dying through, and speed in a special 
train from place to place till the epidemic had died out. 
Thousands were saved. To get to the plague-spots Miss 
Barton's determined band went on and through, even if it 
demanded riding in dirt-cars over dangerous trestles. 

Sunday morning, the 30th of May, 1889, the country was 
shocked by the breaking in Pennsylvania of the dam above 
Johnstown, leaving four thousand dead and thirty thousand 
unfed and homeless in the gutted bed of the reservoir's 
spent torrent. 

For five months, with an expenditure of one half a mil- 
lion in supplies and money, Miss Barton remained at the 
stricken centre of industry, always working in harmony 



CLARA BARTON 169 

with the main State relief appointed by the Governor, 
which distributed six and a half millions in money. She 
had made her way there over washed-out gullies, broken 
engines and mud-banked highways only to find the Gen- 
eral in charge wondering "what a poor lone woman could 
do." 

She answered, as always, not in words, but in actions. 

Six huge and hastily erected buildings became Red Cross 
"hotels." Twenty-five thousand persons were received. 
Another even more mammoth "hotel" was raised. Two 
hundred and eleven thousand dollars was in all distributed 
in supplies, and thirty-nine thousand dollars in money, 
leaving no single case of unrelieved suffering. 1 

RUSSIA 

Now the Red Cross was drawn from home disasters to 
extend "hands across the sea." By failure of crops in 
Russia in 1891 a million square miles were without harvest 
owing to crop failures. Thirty-nine million people were 
famine-stricken! Even at this news the House of Repre- 
sentatives defeated a bill for an appropriation. But the 
Red Cross took up the fallen cause. Societies everywhere 
responded. The Elks initiated the largesses. Then a spirit 
of relief swept the country. Pennsylvania sent a ship 
from Philadelphia. The Christian Herald sent a ship's 
cargo in its own vessel. Iowa shipped one hundred seven- 
teen thousand bushels of corn and one hundred thousand 
pounds of flour in a British steamer to Riga, and to Riga 



lA broach and pendant of diamonds the people of Johnstown 
presented Miss Barton as an outward token of her memorable ser- 
vice. These be among the collection of other rich jewels and in- 
signia. 



170 MASTER MINDS 

to distribute these argosies of grain proceeded the Red 
Cross field officer, Dr. Hubbell. 

August 28th, 1893, a hurricane and tidal wave submerged 
the Port Royal Islands, sixteen feet below the surface, off 
South Carolina. Five thousand negroes were drowned and 
thirty thousand left without homes, which, as they moaned, 
were "done gone" or "ractified. " 

The Governor of South Carolina called the Red Cross, 
and for ten months, endeared to the stricken natives as 
"Miss Clare," Miss Barton presided over operations in the 
field. From fifteen to twenty thousand refugees who had 
flocked to one place she re-distributed. Immediate wants of 
food and clothes once relieved, to reconstruct society fell 
to her also, a thing which she did, backed by one million 
feet of pine lumber, quantities of seed for replanting, and 
thirty thousand dollars in money. Altogether Miss Barton 
rehoused and rehabilitated in society thirty thousand sur- 
vivors ! 

' ' Miss Clare ? ' ' pleaded one darkey. — The rest he enacted 
with action eloquent in pathos as he pulled up a ragged 
sleeve disclosing an ugly scar. 

"Wagner?" exclaimed Miss Barton. 

' ' Yes, you drissed that for me that night I crawled down 
the beach. I was with Colonel Shaw; you drissed our 
wounz ! ' ' 

ARMENIA 

In 1895 and 1896 came the Armenian massacres in 
Asiatic Turkey. 

A large fund was forthcoming and ready to be distrib- 
uted from England and America. 

But how and by whom? All eyes turned to the Red 
Cross. 



CLARA BARTON 171 

The butchered could not be brought back to life. But in 
the regions burnt and raided by Kurds thousands of human 
beings were starving and tens of thousands orphaned and 
helpless. 

They could go to these. 

The International Red Cross alone could reach a zone so 
jealous of interference of other nations. iVow-political, non- 
sectarian — it could enter where an army could not. So it 
was thought by all. Yet suspicious of political intrigue 
and interference, word came from the authorities in Turkey 
that "not even so reputable an organization as the Red 
Cross" would be allowed to enter Turkey. But trusting in 
the strength of the treaty, which she understood so well, 
and her confidence in the power and the humanity of 
national governments, the risk was taken and she went for- 
ward. 

"We honor your position and your wishes shall be 
respected. Such aid and protection as we are able we shall 
render. ' ' 

So said Tewfik Pasha, and the pledge was never broken. 

Five great expeditions the Red Cross sent through Arme- 
nian Turkey, from sea to sea, distributing, repairing, heal- 
ing, settling in homes and enhousing villagers. 

Yet they were not through. A plague of small-pox was 
destroying thousands at Marash and Zeitoon. One hun- 
dred a day were dying. In response to the plea of the 
British Embassy in Constantinople, the Red Cross started a 
long train of caravans for the infected district. May 24th, 
under such hero physicians as Dr. Harris of Tripoli, the 
disease was overcome — one of the preeminent medical vic- 
tories of all time. 

When the fugitives were once reinstated in their houses 
and villages, and food and clothes, seeds, sickles, knives, 



172 MASTER MINDS 

looms and wheels were provided, even the cattle driven off 
by the Kurds into the mountain-passes were bought or 
reclaimed, and to these two thousand plow-oxen were 
added. 

October 8th, 1896, at Washington, Clara Barton's wel- 
come home was celebrated by a banquet of the citizens. 

"wait a moment, miss barton " 

In 1898 Cuba added its rubrics to American history. It 
also impressed its red letters into the annals of the Red 
Cross. At the news of the reconcentrados suffering under 
Weyler, the Red Cross in three days organized the Cuban 
Relief Committee to meet the intolerable conditions among 
the families driven by Weyler into towns — penniless, home- 
less, unfed and sick. 

Prevented from going at once to the front, Miss Barton 
proceeded to the Secretary of State. "He is with the 
President, ' ' was the reply with which she was checked. 

In the lobby she was turned away, but she heard McKin- 
ley's kind voice cry, "Wait a moment, Miss Barton." 

Ushered into the President's room she found President 
McKinley himself as well as the Secretary of State. The 
President's benign face, to grow so soon ashen white as the 
war clouds gathered, expanded with a gentle and assuring 
welcome. He was in a quandary over the very question 
she had come to ask about — the alleviation of the recon- 
centrados. 

The result of the conference was that February 6th she 
left Washington for Cuba, reaching Havana February 9th 
to bring rebef to the thousands of men, women and chil- 
dren. The men were like walking skeletons, the mothers 
mere racks of bones, the babies they carried but little shells 
of living clay. 



CLARA BARTON 173 

For this work Spain itself had sent her the royal grant 
and blessing. 

MISS BARTON IN THE SPANISH WAR 

But on the night of February 15th, while at her desk 
arranging for the distribution of supplies, suddenly the 
table tottered, the house shook, a blast burst open the 
veranda door, revealing amid a deafening roar a lurid 
blaze seaward. Amid the ringing of bells and the blowing 
of whistles came the cry: " The Maine has blown up!" 

Over two hundred were lost and some forty wounded 
were picked up, and Miss Barton and her nurses being 
ready, these fell at once into their care. 

1 ' I am with the wounded, ' ' came her cable from Havana. 

"Suspend judgment," had cabled the Maine's captain. 

But gradually and irrepressibly the verdict veered to 
war, and hostilities began. 

The Red Cross proceeded to secure the steamship State 
of Texas, a fourteen-hundred-ton boat with a black hull. 
On it, April 29th, Clara Barton, who had returned at the 
outbreak, set sail from New York for the open Caribbean. 

June 20th came orders to report at Santiago to Admiral 
Sampson, who, as fighting had begun, had advised Miss 
Barton to proceed to Guantanamo. 

"It's the Rough Riders we go to, and the relief may be 
rough, but it will be ready, ' ' she said. 

Siboney was reached at 9 p.m. 

' ' Ha ! — a woman nurse ? ' ' 

Again Miss Barton, a veteran to this question, faced an 
army. 

As usual her answer came not in words, but acts. Gar- 
cia 's abandoned house she fitted up as a hospital. In three 
days her ability so impressed those in command that there 



174 MASTER MINDS 

came to her the plea from headquarters ' ' to find it possible 
to care for patients in view of a coming engagement!" 

So the Red Cross flag flew to the breeze, and the 1st and 
2d of July the engagement came. The historic file of sol- 
diers had made its way up San Juan. After it soldiers by 
the score, sick or wounded, were lying everywhere. The 
blood had dried and caked with mud on their garments 
over their wounds, as their bodies were necessarily stripped 
by the surgeons, who had no clothing to replace them with. 
Many of them, therefore, lay naked, exposed to the sun's 
fierce tropic heat and to insectivora, daily rains, and shiv- 
ering cold at night. For an awful stretch of thirty hours 
surgeons loaded the operating-tables. 

Saturday came hurried orders from General Shafter: 

"Send food, medicines — anything. Seize wagons from 
the front for transportation!" 

The army supplies in ships lay off at sea, with no dock 
and no means of landing them. But from the decks of the 
steamer State of Texas and back on a surf no small boat 
could weather, Miss Barton nevertheless sent supplies ! By 
having natives leap overboard in the breakers and seizing 
the flat boat pontoons in which she had lightered these sup- 
plies, she succeeded in landing the precious necessaries. 
Improvising transport wagons out of hay-carts, on one of 
which she herself rode, she made her way to the front, to 
the First Division Hospital, Fifth Army Corps, of General 
Shafter. 

The field she found a morass. The tents were but dog 
tents staked in the coarse grass. She saw men wounded, 
freshly operated upon, still lying unprotected in the sun 
and rain by day, and the chill by night. Seventeen died 
that night. In the battle besides the killed, five hundred 
were wounded. Altogether eight hundred lay in tents or 



CLARA BARTON 175 

sprawled upon the grass. No fires were lit except such as 
came from wet wood smouldering from six bricks overlaid 
with two pieces of wagon-tire. Above them were small 
camp-kettles, in which the detailed soldiers were trying to 
make coffee for their wounded comrades. 

But soon Miss Barton had erected high fire-places. Over 
these she placed great agate camp-kettles holding six and 
seven gallons apiece. In the cheerful blaze they watched 
her unwind mammoth white bolts of unbleached cotton for 
covering for the men. Gruel, the first in three days, was 
soon simmering in all the great agate kettles, sending out 
its savor to the half-famished and the wounded. 

"Who sent it?" was everywhere the tearful query. 

Five Red Cross nurses met each arrival. These were Sis- 
ter Bettina, wife of the Red Cross surgeon ; Dr. 
Lesser, the noted head of the Red Cross Hospital in New 
York city; Sister Minnie, Sister Isabel, Sister Anna and 
Sister Blanche. 

They served, as they thus met each fresh arrival of a 
wounded body, for a forty hours' stretch of sleepless ser- 
vice. All night and day and night again, one by one, 
wounded and sick and shelterless were being taken under 
cover and care. 

Early in the dawn of the first day after the engagement 
a rough figure in brown khaki appeared at the little Red 
Cross hospital. His clothes showed hard service, and a red 
bandanna handkerchief hung from his hat to protect the 
back of his neck from the already broiling sun-rays. 

"I have some sick men with the regiment who refuse to 
leave it. They need such delicacies as you have here which 
I am ready to pay for out of my own pocket. Can I buy 
them?" 

"Not for a million dollars!" 



176 MASTER M INDS 

"But my men need these things," he said, his face and 
tone expressing anxiety. "I think a great deal of my men. 
I am proud of them. ' ' 

"And we know we are proud of you, Colonel; but we 
can't sell hospital supplies." 

"Then how can I get them?" 

' ' Just ask for them, Colonel. ' ' 

"Oh," he said, his face suddenly lighting up with a 
bright smile. "Lend me a sack and I'll take them right 
along." 

Slinging the ponderous sack over his shoulder, the last 
they saw was the rough figure in khaki, overtopped by the 
red bandanna, swinging off out of sight through the jungle. 

It was Theodore Roosevelt ! 

At last the Spaniards ' wall of ships was broken and Cer- 
vera's fleet forced out of the bottled-up harbor. 

But in the besieged islands thousands of reconcentrados 
were famishing and without shelter. A demand for thirty 
thousand rations came at one call. There to meet it was 
Clara Barton and the black-hulled supply-ship Texas. 

But red-tape orders due to fear of fever contagion stood 
between the Red Cross and the landing of supplies. 

At her appeal, however, July 16, 1898, the President of 
the Red Cross was ordered to proceed at once to the flag- 
ship of Admiral Sampson herself. She had only to refer 
to the twelve hundred tons of food, of which only two hun- 
dred had been landed, and the thousands in crying need at 
Santiago, while still beyond that were the thirty thousand 
dying and suffering at El Caney. 

It was enough to win Admiral Sampson's consent. 

Then came the Sunday's crisis when the Spanish fleet 
came out to its doom. Just afterwards Admiral Sampson 
dispatched a pilot to board the Red Cross ship the State of 
Texas. 



CLARA BARTON 177 

Orders were given Miss Barton to proceed. With the 
Red Cross streamer aloft, Clara Barton ran the Texas past 
the guns of Morro, past the smoking wrecks of the Spanish 
men-of-war, past the sunken Merrimac. The sun was 
setting on an empurpled sea. No mine was struck. 
No other craft ploughed the grave-like waters. On 
they went — "a cargo of food under the direction of a 
woman!" Hers was the first ship to enter the captured 
port. 

As her ship neared the spires of Santiago, Miss Barton 
asked : 

' ' Is there any one who can sing the Doxology ? ' ' 

"Praise God!" rang from the deck, followed by "My 
Country, 'Tis of Thee." This was the ship's order of 
entrance : the Red Cross ship, by far away the first ; after 
her the flagships of Admirals Sampson and Schley. 

"Directions?" flagged Miss Barton. 

" You need no directions from me, but if any one troubles 
you let me know," signaled Admiral Sampson. 

While Shafter negotiated with Santiago, the Spanish 
wounded were tenderly sent back on American stretchers, 
General Shafter demonstrating to the letter the Genevan 
Treaty of equal care to the enemy's wounded. During 
this, General Toral 's troops stood at present-arms, suffering 
a mental revolution at the sight, for they had been filled 
with the mediaeval fear of butchery. 

Clara Barton and the Red Cross in Cuba were thus 
memorialized when, on December 6th, President McKinley 
sent in his message to Congress : 

"It is a pleasure to me to mention in terms of cordial 

appreciation the timely and useful work of the Red Cross, 

both in relief measures preparatory to the campaigns, in 

sanitary assistance to several of the camps of assemblage, 

12 



178 MASTER MINDS 

and later under the able and experienced leadership of 
Miss Clara Barton on the fields of battle and in the hospi- 
tals at the front in Cuba. The Red Cross has fully main- 
tained its already high reputation for intense earnestness 
and ability to exercise the noble purposes of its inter- 
national organization. ' ' 

AT THE GALVESTON FLOOD 

A tidal wave and tornado of terrific and titanic force on 
September 8, 1900, swept over the seas and submerged Gal- 
veston, the metropolis of Texas. Containing some forty 
thousand human souls, with the island on which it stood 
and the adjoining mainland, the buried city was engulfed 
in the ripping fury of the waves. Lives to the awful num- 
ber of from eight thousand to ten thousand were suddenly 
lost in the cataclysm of flood and cyclone, which crushed 
like eggshells four thousand homes of the people, only to 
drown these people like rats in the hurtling debris. The 
thousands of survivors "through a terrible day of storm 
and a night of horror floated and swam and struggled, amid 
the storm-beaten waves, with the broken slate roofs of all 
these houses hurled like cannon-shot against them, cutting, 
breaking, crushing ; meeting in the waves obstacles of every 
sort from a crazed cow fighting for its life to a mad mocca- 
sin-snake — perhaps to come out at last on some beach miles 
away, among people as strange and bewildered as them- 
selves. Some of them struggled back to find possibly a few 
members of the family left, the rest among the several thou- 
sand of whom nothing is known." 

When the waters subsided, eight thousand and more wan- 
dered, dazed and destitute, in the sand which coated the 
land, but in which tent-stakes could not be successfully 
fixed to afford even the shelter of wind-tossed canvas. 



CLARA BARTON 179 

Confronting these refugees and victims as they opened 
their eyes, shook off their stupor and became conscious of 
the catastrophe, was only (to use Miss Barton's eyes) "the 
de'bris of broken houses, crushed to splinters and piled 
twenty feet high, along miles of sea-coast, where even six 
blocks wide of the city itself was gone, and the sea rolled 
and tossed over what was lately its finest and most thickly 
populated avenues; heaps of splintered wood were filled 
with the furniture of once beautiful habitations — beds, 
pianos, chairs, tables, — all that made up happy homes. 
Worse than that, the bodies of the owners were rotting 
therein, twenty or thirty of them being taken out every 
day, as workmen removed the rubbish and laid it on great 
piles of ever-burning fire, covering the corpses with mat- 
tresses, doors, boards — anything that was found near them, 
and then left to burn out or go away in impregnated smoke, 
while the weary workmen ' toiled ' on for the next. ' ' 

Almost every family in the city had all or part of its 
members among the dead, while the living, for the most 
part without a roof, remained to suffer in the blasts of the 
retreating hurricane and coming nor'easters. 

To succor and shelter the thirty thousand people left, 
one-third of whom at least were huddling in the wreckage 
like cattle in a pen, came the Red Cross, headed by Clara 
Barton in person. 

September 13th Texas City, just opposite Galveston, was 
reached, after the first news of the disaster at Washington, 
by Clara Barton and her committee. While awaiting the 
boat across the bay, Miss Barton's party were met by the 
local caretakers of the many injured who were being cared 
for in crowded quarters in Texas City itself, although it 
mostly lay stricken level to the ground. Across the bay 
the doomed city of Galveston appeared lighted not by elec- 



180 MASTERMINDS 

trie arcs, but by vast funeral pyres on the coast of the 
island and the adjoining mainland. Twenty-three funeral 
piles Miss Barton could count at one time. Everywhere 
the air reeked as it was to reek for months with the acrid 
smoke of burnt human flesh, frequently thirty bodies and 
more being in one of the awful pyres. These only could 
destroy them, as the tide had carried bodies away but to 
return them to be cast upon the shore. At hand, Miss Bar- 
ton and her committee were confronted by hosts of 
refugees, whom the little harbor-boat kept landing on the 
beach at Texas City. All were sufferers, whether maimed 
or dazed. Lunatics and unnumbered cases of nervous 
prostration caused by the late terror arrived with the 
rest. 

Thus warned of the catastrophe's extent, next morning 
Miss Barton 's committee took the boat to the stricken city. 
At a first interview a representative of the party was told 
that the city ' ' needed no nurses ! " At the quick reply of 
Miss Barton's spokesman that she "was glad, as they had 
none to give," the look of surprise which followed upon 
the face of the high-keyed local head of medical relief was 
countered by the Red Cross representative's rebuttal: 
"What are you most in need of?" 

' ' Surgical dressings and medical supplies. ' ' 

Telegraphing the huge order it was filled and receipted 
by the Red Cross in twenty-four hours ! Thus learned the 
Galveston local committee of relief that the Red Cross had 
come with the country behind its back. Thus they learned 
that a Nation was subject to the Red Cross' beck and 
call. 

"What do you most need?" was asked of the chief of 
police. 

"Homes," was the reply. 



GLAEA BARTON 181 

Estimating the material needed for homes, Miss Barton 
at once sent over the whole United States a plea to all lum- 
ber, hardware and furniture dealers. 

Facing the actual needs, the Red Cross thus went to 
work, each group with a separate department of investiga- 
tion empowered to meet the discovered need, whether it be 
for stoves, heaters, food, clothing, bedding, blankets, or 
other necessities of life. 

As the answer to these needs, from the constantly arriv- 
ing carloads and shiploads centralized at the Red Cross 
warehouses, came huge boxes, branded with the flaming 
Red Cross, ready to be landed at every place where clus- 
tered a group of survivors. 

The task was tremendous and but begun. Miss Barton, 
who herself remained two months, thus sketched the condi- 
tion: 

"Dead citizens lay by thousands amid the wreck of their 
homes, and raving maniacs searched the d6bris for their 
loved ones, with the organized gangs of workers. Corpses, 
dumped by barge-loads into the Gulf, came floating back 
to menace the living ; and the nights were lurid with incin- 
erations of putrefying bodies, piled like cord-wood, black 
and white together, irrespective of age, sex or previous 
condition. At least four thousand dwellings had been 
swept away, with all their contents, and fully half of the 
population of the city was without shelter, food, clothes, 
or any of the necessaries of life. Of these, some were 
living in tents, others crowded in with friends hardly less 
fortunate; many half-crazed, wandering aimlessly about 
the streets, and the story of their sufferings, mental and 
physical, past the telling. Every house that remained was 
a house of mourning. Fires yet burned continuously, fed 



182 MASTERMINDS 

not only by human bodies, but by thousands of carcasses 
of domestic animals. 

"By that time, in the hot, moist atmosphere of the lati- 
tude, decomposition had so far advanced that the corpses — 
which at first were decently carried in carts or on stretch- 
ers, then shoveled upon boards or blankets — had finally to 
be scooped up with pitchforks in the hands of negroes, 
kept at their awful task by the soldiers' bayonets. And 
still the 'finds' continued, at the average rate of seventy a 
day. The once-beautiful driving-beach was strewn with 
mounds and trenches, holding unrecognized and uncoffined 
victims of the flood ; and between this improvised cemetery 
and a ridge of de'bris, three miles long and in places higher 
than the houses had been, a line of cremation fires poisoned 
the air." 

Even during the sixth week in Galveston, happening to 
pass one of these primitive crematories, Miss Barton 
stopped to interview the man in charge. Boards, water- 
soaked mattresses, rags of blankets and curtains, part of a 
piano and the framework of sewing-machines piled on top, 
gave it the appearance of a festive bonfire, and only the 
familiar odor betrayed its purpose. 

' ' Have you burned any bodies here ? ' ' she inquired. The 
custodian regarded her with a stare that plainly said, "Do 
you think I am doing this for amusement ? ' ' and shifted his 
quid from cheek to cheek before replying : 

' ' Ma 'am, ' ' said he, ' ' this 'ere fire 's been goin ' on more 'n 
a month. To my knowledge, upwards of sixty bodies have 
been burned in it. ' ' 

One department of the Red Cross took care of all sur- 
viving children, orphaned by the loss of parents, — a group 
especially appealing to the country and for which in New 
York alone was raised fifty thousand dollars. 



CLARA BARTON 183 

In all it took four vast warehouses and twelve ward- 
stations to act as a base from which to systematize the vast 
work of Red Cross relief. 

Besides Galveston proper the experienced eye of Miss 
Barton at once saw six smitten counties on the mainland 
with homes destroyed, houses leveled to kindling heaps and 
their casualties a replica of Galveston's horrible tale of 
death and woe on the night of horrors of September 8. 

In addition in these farming districts on the main coast, 
all crops and farming animals were destroyed. Not only 
to offer charity but to help people help themselves and give 
them work, was the great question. 

Miss Barton, through her committee, at once saw the 
point of permanent need. One million and a half of 
strawberry-plants and cases of other seeds for southern 
crops, through her committee she provided and added to 
the carloads and shiploads of immediate necessities. But 
there were in need one thousand square miles and sixty 
different towns and villages in the stricken districts on the 
mainland. 

To all these the Red Cross, though centred at Galveston, 
turned its hand not only with tools and seeds for the 
future, but to meet the crying needs of the moment with 
one thousand five hundred and fifty-two huge cases, two 
hundred and fifty-eight barrels, five hundred and forty- 
two packages, thirteen casks, containing mixed clothing, 
shoes, crockery, hardware, groceries, disinfectants and 
medicine, in addition to carloads of lumber. 

Of the great national disasters in America in times of 
peace, this calamity September 8, 1900, at Galveston, has 
been the vastest and most destructive. 

Next and almost as calamitous were the Johnstown flood 
and the cyclone and the engulfment on the Port Royal 
Islands. 



184 MASTERMINDS 

The loss of life in each of the three cataclysms was nearly 
in each case ten thousand human lives, while at Galveston 
the sums of money for relief were almost the same as at 
Johnstown, namely, nearly one million five hundred thou- 
sand dollars ! 

And in all these national disasters ready in times of 
peace as it had come to be so gloriously in times of war, 
extending out from the great body of our people, the hand 
of relief was the Red Cross, the soul of which was a little 
woman not standing over five feet four inches — Clara Bar- 
ton. 

Grandly institutionalized as a governmental institution 
as it is to-day, with first the Secretary of War and now the 
national President 1 proud to be at the head — this Red Cross, 
whose hand reaches out so gloriously from the body of our 
people, would never have been born in America had it not 
been through the travail of this little woman 's soul, who, to 
let it be born, had to fight off the very government which 
now so proudly and ardently has taken it out of her hands 
and claimed it for its own. 



FIRST AID TO THE INJURED " 

But her work was not yet through. Miss Barton's 
genius of observation in foreign countries, especially Switz- 
erland and England, had shown her the great utility of 
first-aid work known as the St. John Ambulance, which 



iDee. 8th, 1908, President-elect Win. H. Taft was re-elected Pres- 
ident of the American Eed Cross, asserting it would give him great 
pleasure to continue as its head. President Taft refused to be 
elected an honorary member, as he coveted the privilege of active 
leadership. 



CLARA BARTON 185 

work she had been very desirous of establishing in Amer- 
ica; and at length, in the spring of 1903, she succeeded in 
establishing under the direction of Edward Howe of Eng- 
land, assisted by Roscoe G. Wells and others, a 
headquarters of First Aid in Boston, with the purpose of 
making it a part of the American Red Cross work, and it 
was so voted and entered in the by-laws of the Red Cross 
of 1903. In 1904 Miss Barton resigned from the Red 
Cross, it having virtually become a Government institution. 
But in its reorganization the First Aid not being included 
either in its charter or by-laws, and as Miss Barton was 
still anxious for its establishment in America, she con- 
tinued its work at the headquarters in Boston. Of its dire 
and grim necessity a few statistical facts give abundant 
evidence. In the industries of the United States five hun- 
dred thousand casualties occur each year. Every minute 
one toiler drops either killed or injured ! 

In 1889 among railroad men casualties happened to one 
in thirty-five men. In 1905 it increased to one in nineteen 
— thus doubling the peril. 

One man dropping a minute! — It has been truly said: 
' ' The Russo-Japanese War could not equal that ! ' ' 

In this industrial strife, maiming and killing in times of 
peace five hundred thousand a year, can not the Red Cross 
serve? 

Such a challenge has not escaped Clara Barton, in whom, 
when human pain is in view, her eye for its relief is not 
dimmed nor her natural force abated. 

The motive of this new and needed organization she has 
said is "essentially the giving of first aid. You cannot do 
this by giving pink teas or by keeping accounts in an office. 
Such work is done by going about with your sleeves rolled 
up and with the immediate situation always in hand. ' ' 



186 MASTER MINDS 

June 17, 1906, in Boston, therefore, the association born 
of this motive grew into an organization. It was for the 
purpose of instructing people in the knowledge of "First 
Aid to the Injured" — "what to do and how to do it in 
time of accident." 

This gathering without Miss Barton, fine as it was, would 
have been but an organization. With her it was an 
organism. 

"It is an organized movement," she arose to say, "that 
shall yet permeate more homes, penetrate more hearts, 
broaden more needs, carry useful knowledge to more men 
and women who could get it no other way, assuage more 
suffering that nothing else could reach, awaken an interest 
in the welfare of his brother man in more rough toil-worn 
hearts unknown to it before, than lies in our power to esti- 
mate or our hopes to conceive. ' ' 

"Twenty-five years ago, when it was my privilege to 
bring the germ of the Red Cross to this country, and after 
years of untold labor gained for it a foothold, a treaty, a 
charter and a working organization, I thought I had done 
my country and its people the most humane service it 
would ever be in my power to offer. 

"But as organized, it reached only a certain class. All 
the accidents incidental to family life, mechanics, chemi- 
cals, manufactories and railroads with their hundred thou- 
sand victims a year, were not within its province. 

"Hence the necessity and opportunity for this broader 
work where." she went on to say, "the sickening stab of 
sharpened steel, the rending of saws, the tearing of drills, 
the gnaw of couplers, the pinch of belts become a biting 
agony." 

"A wise Providence has permitted me to leave the one 
that I might stand with the other in its beginning. ' Peace 



CLARA BARTON 187 

hath her battlefields no less than war.' The sweat of 
blood, the dust, dirt and grime-glued frame, the aching 
stress on full-strained muscle and sinew, thwart the pur- 
pose, blind the eye, deaden the will and divert the crafts- 
man's skill." 

Thus Clara Barton became President of ' ' The First Aid 
to the Injured," and thence the association has radiated 
its power till it has reached all the States of the Union, and 
has become a National organization, inspirited with the soul 
of its President. 

It was incorporated as a National body April 18, 1905. 

"Its First Aid Handbook" 1 carries directions for treat- 
ing accidents of every kind. Illustrated with diagrams it 
is of great effect. Its lessons are taught in all branches of 
society and industry — in classes of railroad men, Y. M. C. 
A., police departments, gymnasiums, fire departments, 
boys' schools, the Salvation Army and innumerable facto- 
ries and centres of industries, as well as in a universal and 
unclassed host of individuals and homes throughout the 
land. 

Thus never ceasing to toil for her fellows in distress, the 
afternoon of her career Miss Barton spends in winter at 
her home, Glen Echo, Maryland, and in summers at her old 
home town of Oxford, Massachusetts. 

Eighty-eight years young, Clara Barton can still 
declare to-day, as she declared to a gathering of neigh- 
bors and friends not long ago : 



i"The Barton First Aid Text-book," 134 pp. Issued at 6 Beacon 
Street, Boston, by H. H. Hartung, M.D. Under Clara Barton's pen 
has been also issued ' ' The History of the Bed Cross, " " The History 
of the Bed Cross in Peace and War," and "The Story of My 
Childhood." 



188 MASTER MINDS 

"My working hours are fourteen out of twenty-four. 1 It 
is my duty to work for the good of my kind. While the 
strength is given me, I have no right to lay it down. ' ' 



iA day with Miss Barton, Sunday, September 26th, 1909, revealed 
her wonderful retention of human faculties. "It is too bad it is 
raining," the author remarked as he escorted her from an auto- 
mobile into his church where she was to speak. "Is it?" she said 
carelessly, ' ' I hadn 't noticed it ! " Addressing from five to six 
hundred people a little later, she rose and spoke unsupported for 
fifteen minutes, and with the voice and animation and intellect of 
a woman of forty. Hardly a gray hair was to be seen, and she fol- 
lowed her speech by standing to receive hundreds of people. Per- 
haps this continued thought of others and self-forgetfulness is the 
secret of her keeping her youth at eigthy-eight. Though dining 
as heartily as a girl, she said she avoided every stimulant, saying 
when we offered her coffee: "I never drink coffee — or whiskey." 




George Bancroft 
Historian of the United States 



GEORGE BANCROFT 

HISTORIAN OF THE UNITED STATES 

MANY famous sons of clergymen have refuted the 
wicked old blackmail about "ministers' sons" by 
being the product of an American manse. 
To this circle George Bancroft, greatest historian of the 
United States, adds a name surpassingly notable. He 
bears witness to the power of a simple parsonage to radiate 
integrity and influence far outside of things ecclesiastical 
into a world-wide domain where all truth is God's. 

Bancroft Tower, off Salisbury Street in Worcester, 
marks a corner of the farm where stood the rustic manse in 
which George, the eighth of thirteen children, was born 
October 3d, 1800. 

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE THE CRUCIBLE OF HIS FATHER'S 
CHARACTER 

The answer to the question why it happened to be a farm 
when his father was pastor two miles away of a church on 
Back Street (now Summer Street), leads to an interesting 
situation as the curtain rises on the stage whereon George 
Bancroft began life. 

Five hundred dollars, largely in back bills to be collected 
at a discount, was all the salary his father, Aaron Bancroft, 
drew. Hence to eke out his scanty living, he had to take 
to farming on the rocky hillsides where stands the monu- 
mental tower. 



190 MASTERMINDS 

A few years before, while a sophomore at Harvard, the 
Revolution sounded its call. Then Aaron left college, 
shouldered a gun at Lexington and fought at Bunker Hill. 

Sturdy independence was thus inborn and fired into the 
human clay of his youth at the age of change. It was an 
independence that showed itself at every turn long after 
the Treaty of Peace. 

The determination to hold up his head, preach to the best 
in Worcester and go on preaching at the pittance of a sal- 
ary, was a continuation of the same fighting-blood of the 
independent. 

This independent spirit pervaded every side of his life. 

For example, he insisted on marrying the daughter of a 
distinguished Tory royalist, John Chandler, whose goods 
and lands were confiscated, and who became an exile rather 
than take the oath of allegiance. Lucretia Chandler was 
the daughter of this exile, who had lived up to his convic- 
tions for King George as stubbornly as his son-in-law, on 
the other side, fought against him. The exile's wife, left 
to take care of seventeen children, died. Lucretia was 
left as an older daughter out of the sad break-up of such 
a home and its plunge into "the poverty-stricken state." 
Then because he was man enough in a case of true love to 
"cut prejudice against the grain" and ask her, Lucretia 
married Aaron, George Bancroft's father. 

Aaron Bancroft also showed this independence of judg- 
ment in the years 1783-84, when he preached in the pulpit 
of Old South, the First Parish, where a majority of the 
people were conservative, and held tenaciously to the ortho- 
dox side of Calvinism. A score of old families of intellect 
and culture thought the other way, and tended toward 
Arminianism. In the old meeting-house, Aaron Bancroft 
preached on without fear or favor, and as a result was sure 



GEORGE BANCROFT 191 

to incur upon his head the indignation of some one. It 
proved to be the orthodox majority who thought his views 
heretical. Then the church split — a fact he always de- 
plored, — and in 1785 the more advanced thinkers asked 
him to become their minister in another place, though they 
still were compelled to pay tax to the old First, the estab- 
lished church of the Worcester colony. 1 

In 1786 so few and far between were those of his per- 
suasion that it was hard to find clergymen to ordain him, 
one from Lancaster and one from Lunenburg alone con- 
senting. 

Fifty-three and one-half years in this pulpit, Aaron Ban- 
croft stood his ground, acting up to the courage of his con- 
victions and preaching truth as he saw it in this new 
church which soon grew into a Unitarian communion. 

A soldier of fortune in his struggle for thirteen boys and 
girls, and backed by but a remnant of people, he yet founded 
a home instinctive with manly independence and dearly 
bought honor. Persecution, loneliness and struggle had 
the effect of the wind on the flower, toughening the tissues 
in the stock, which in this case were mental, moral, spirit- 
ual as well as physical. Development under such pressure 
made his home dynamic and vibratory with originality, 
resourcefulness, progress and creative thought. 

In three-cornered hat and knickerbockers, the last man 
in Worcester to wear them, small and wiry, but dignified, 
Aaron Bancroft was every inch the freshly-moulded Amer- 
ican. 

For him her old-world moulds aside she threw — 
New birth of our new soil. 

He marked out his own path, where every epoch 
was a new battlefield, and a fresh victory for a soul in 



iln 1787 legal separation was effected and the tax stopped. 



192 MASTER MINDS 

whom energized to the end the quintessence of American 
independence. 

Ploughing all the day as he had to plough, he yet kept an 
elastic, growing mind, uncalloused by drudgery. His 
application of religion to life instead of metaphysics and 
dogma, his devotion to ripe scholarship and his gift of 
expression were the fine flowers that grew out of his posi- 
tion, grounded as it was into this touch with the soil. 

All this made its home-thrust into George, and was 
inbuilt into his physical and his spiritual structure. 

Senator George Frisbie Hoar, three quarters of a cen- 
tury later, when amazed at George Bancroft's vigor of 
thought and beauty of diction, heard him from his own lips 
ascribe his deep inclinations towards these and towards his- 
tory to his father, Aaron Bancroft, who had "a very judi- 
cial mind and would have been an eminent historian. ' ' 

THE "bURBANKING" OF THE BOY EST WORCESTER'S HILLS AND 

POOLS 

"Burbanking" a boy finds no better confirmation for the 
training of the human plant than in the making of this 
master-mind of Bancroft. 

"I was a wild boy," he wrote to a literary friend, 
"and your aunt did not like me. She was always fearful 
that I would get her son into bad ways, and still more 
alarmed lest I should some day be the cause of his being 
brought home dead. There was a river or piece of water 
near "Worcester where I used to beguile young Salisbury, 
and having constructed a rude sort of raft, he and I would 
pass a good deal of our play-time in aquatic amusements, 
not by any means unattended by danger. Madam 's remon- 
strances were all in vain, and she was more and more con- 



GEORGE BANCROFT 193 

firmed in the opinion that I was a wild, bad boy — a wild, 
bad boy I continued to be up to manhood." 

This strain of the wilding in his nature ever kept Ban- 
croft from being out of touch with common clay and from 
being carried off his feet by things academic, pedantic and 
bookish. 

He owed this strain not only to such an out of doors in 
which he revelled in Worcester's green hills and silver pools 
— not only to mother earth, but to his mother in the flesh. 
Far removed from the academician and stoic scholar in her 
husband, Aaron Bancroft, her nature was elastic with 
animal spirits and homespun out of simple affection, com- 
mon sense, charity and unlettered good humor. 

' ' How happy I was, ' ' the good dame wrote, ' ' when I had 
half a douzen children standing around me for their break- 
fast and supper, consisting of rye bread tosted, the frag- 
ments of cold coffee boyled and put on milk. I always did 
it with my own hands, they as cheerful and satisfied as if 
it was a dainty. For why? Because mother gave it to 
them. At dinner my children always dined with us. 
Cheap soup or pudding would be generally seen — I learned 
many cheap dishes. I was grateful for the bright prospect 
before the children as they advanced, for their readiness 
to learn and the very great love they show to their 
mother. ' ' 

Such was the untutored love-light in Bancroft's mother. 

There was none of the danger of over-education of mind 
and under-education of body as exists too often in the hot- 
house plant of to-day 's schools. The session itself was only 
a three-hour-and-a-half one in the old town school-house, 
and the rustic walk back and forth for two miles each way 
fortunately gave play to pent-up animal spirits. 
Eyes and ears were always open along the road. What he 
13 



194 MASTERMINDS 

saw diverted the boy and lent color to his imagination, in 
which it was long afterwards retained over the gulf of three 
generations, to appear in his later life and visualize the 
earlier epoch. 

' ' I saw a man in the pillory there once, ' ' he exclaimed, at 
nearly ninety, while on a visit to Worcester, in the course 
of which he passed by Court House Hill. "He had 
uttered some blasphemous words and was punished in that 
way. ' ' 

To his dying day he related with gusto such jokes as his 
boyish fancy caught as he trotted to and fro from school, 
or rode behind his father's old horse from the countryside 
to Lincoln Square. 

One of these bits of humor he regaled his friends with 
was about old Levi Lincoln. The old gentleman was 
nearly blind. A flock of geese were being driven up Lin- 
coln Street. Leaning far out of his carriage, the fine old 
aristocrat, thinking they were children, threw out a hand- 
ful of pennies, graciously exclaiming: 

"God bless you, my children!" 

After these journeys afoot to and from school in the 
morning, for the rest of the day the farm offered abundant 
opportunity to work off all surplus energy before it could 
go too far. Here also he gained a control over his nervous, 
bilious, melancholic nature, leaving it for life like his 
father's, wiry and enduring. 

"If a man does not take time to keep well, he will have 
to take time to be sick, ' ' was a motto he learned here. 

Bancroft's originality 

Within the farm-manse the atmosphere was as conducive 
to the natural growth of the higher being as the out-of-door 



GEORGE BANCROFT 195 

life was to the bodily. Original judgment, not a mumbling 
over of formularies, was the rule of the house. To culti- 
vate it, his father in debate with celebrated men of the day, 
such as the chief justices and other leaders, was accustomed 
to turn to him and ask of him, a boy of six, his opinion. 

It is a mark of such originality here cultivated that in 
several ways George Bancroft, though in spirit a filial 
embodiment, did not at all copy his father in the forms of 
his life. 

The forms also of his religious views were different. His 
father was pastor of the first Unitarian Church in Worces- 
ter. George Bancroft thought for himself, and declared 
himself more in sympathy with the Trinitarians. 1 

All through life Bancroft exercised original insight in 
religion. He saw the good in each sect, discriminating it 
from its limitations. He rejected the dogma, but wel- 
comed the spirit of the Unitarian. He attended service 
with Episcopalians, but said, "I am not an Episcopalian." 
He deplored the formalism of the Roman Catholic system, 
but immersed his soul in worship at St. Peter's, And how- 
ever much he turned from the Congregational to worship 
elsewhere, he yet always turned back again to conclude, ' ' I 
am a Congregationalist. " 2 

One thing that contributed to his ability to think for 
himself was his departure, at the early age of eleven, for 
Phillips Exeter Academy. Aaron and Lucretia Bancroft 
were able to get him there, but so poor were they, in their 
high thinking and plain living, that they were unable to 



iSee life and letters of George Bancroft. — M. A. DeWolfe Howe, 
Vol. II, p. 120. 

2" I am with increasing years more and more pleased with the 
simplicity and freedom of the New England Congregational system." 
— Ibid. 



196 MASTER MINDS 

get him back, and, once there, he had to stay for two long 
years for lack of the few extra coin to carry him on the 
stage back to Worcester. 

Trained to face situations originally, not to be a crammed 
and prodded little spender always dependent upon 
another, George acted with such attack upon his studies, 
extracting essentials out of their mixture with unessentials, 
that men like Hildreth, the annalist, and Benjamin Abbott, 
even then ascribed to him "the stamina of a distinguished 
man. ' ' 

In the year 1813, when only thirteen, he entered Har- 
vard, at the time a college small in quantity, but in qual- 
ity great in men like Sparks, Palfrey, Samuel Eliot and 
Edward Everett. Stimulus to original writing lay in the 
air of this expanding centre of American scholars, out of 
which at seventeen, in 1817, Bancroft was graduated with 
the second English oration. June 27th, 1818, sent by the 
college he had markedly impressed, and granted a scholar- 
ship of seven hundred dollars a year, Bancroft departed 
for Germany. 

BANCROFT THE EUROPEAN STUDENT 

Gottingen in a night had become a small circle of schol- 
ars through the sudden exit of twenty-five hundred stu- 
dents, owing to a town and gown row. These scholars and 
instructors were inspired with the genius of scholarship, 
whose inclination from close contact was contagious. As to 
his course Bancroft wrote: "Of German theological works 
I have read, till I find there is in them everything which 
learning and acuteness can give, and that there is in them 
nothing which religious feeling and reverence for Chris- 
tianity can give. ' ' 



GEORGE BANCROFT 197 

Hence his course turned his mind to other channels than 
the theological, while from Biblical studies he veered to 
Oriental languages and history. 

Starting upon the ideal set by Eichorn, to study from 
ten to fifteen hours a day, he rose at five and ground over 
books and lectures till eleven at night. In 1820 he became 
a doctor of philosophy, a degree heading that long series of 
degrees which later followed him from Oxford back into 
America from one university after another. 

Unlike certain Americans of lesser status, Bancroft's 
originality of mind and peerlessness of judgment never 
shone clearer than in his estimates of continental life. 
While appreciating German virtues to a degree that the 
Germans came to say, "He is one of us, ' ' he refused to be 
expatriated, and retained a New England conscience in all 
its essential insight. Rare technical culture and the expert 
scholarship of specialists he discovered and lauded as the 
Germanic contribution to truth. But the separation of this 
scholarship from character he at once detected. Such men 
as "Wolf, whose brilliant abilities as scholars amazed him, 
awoke by their private home-life and treatment of women, 
only detestation. Biblical scholars so devoid of charity 
that they took the silver shoe-buckles for fees from poor 
students who had nothing else to give, alike pained him. 

Continental standards of society he refused to hide under 
"fine art." Goethe's Bohemianism he declaimed against 
as "indecency and immorality, in which he preferred to 
represent vice as lovely and exciting," "and would rather 
take for his heroine a prostitute or profligate than to give 
birth to that purity of thought and loftiness of soul." 

At a supper given by the pro-rector of the university, he 
flushed as he heard a professor rise and ejaculate with a 



198 MASTERMINDS 

flourish, "He who does not love wine, women and song 
remains a fool all the days of his life. ' ' 

In such an atmosphere he wrote, "I do not myself be- 
lieve that my reverence for a religion which is connected 
with all my hopes of happiness and usefulness and distinc- 
tion can be diminished by ridicule." 

While this discrimination existed, it did not shut his eyes 
to the rare culture and educative genius of such specialists, 
and he learned from it what he could, aiming to become 
a scholar as well as a clergyman, on his return to America. 
History and languages along with church development and 
Biblical exegesis formed the core of his tasks from five in 
the morning till eleven at night. The ideal he had adopted, 
to study and attend lectures from ten to fifteen hours a 
day, he studiously followed. 

In vacation, following the example of American students 
like Ticknor and Everett in tramping through Germany, he 
met Goethe and other German geniuses at their homes and 
gardens. His admiration of the technique of scholarship 
continued to grow adversely to his estimate of continental 
character, Bancroft maintaining that he was "too Ameri- 
can, ' ' and could ' ' not endure the coarseness of their amuse- 
ments, and still less of their vices. ' ' 

In 1820 he became a doctor of philosophy. For his third 
year, feeling "that erudition" for which his school stood, 
when taken alone, a dead weight on society, he left Gottin- 
gen and chose Berlin, where "the grand aim is to make 
men think. ' ' 

The eye-flashing and electric reverence of Schleier- 
macher, at once a combination of spiritual seer and Teu- 
tonic sage, captured Bancroft mind and soul. 

"Virtue, the life of study and cheerfulness," together 
with "literary activity and domestic quiet," "with the 



GEORGE BANCROFT 199 

calm and pure delight of friendship, ' ' he now laid down as 
his programme for the future. 

In the vacation intervals he was to spend a few weeks in 
Heidelberg, then in Paris, where was a meeting with Schle- 
gel, Baron Von Humboldt, Cuvier, Lafayette and his 
great-souled countryman, Washington Irving. In contrast 
to seeking the panderers to American swinishness with 
which Europe, and Paris especially, even then began to 
swarm, he held up as his quest "the grand, true models of 
uncorrupted virtue." 

The sublime heights of the Alps and the depth of sorrow 
of his brother's death in 1821 aroused his desire to be a 
prophet of the soul. 

Little did he think then that it was his country's soul of 
which he would be the prophet. 

"It seemed," he wrote, "that I never should be so 
happy ; as if God would one day teach me to pray earnestly 
and preach eloquently. ' ' 

"There are many things in my character yet to be 
changed or improved. I long to become more deeply 
devout." "At home, in retirement, there will be many an 
opportunity of becoming well acquainted with the works 
of the pious who have written so feelingly on religion. 
From them I would strive to learn the direct way to win 
hearts. ' ' 

"I began to feel (January 1, 1822) a strong desire 
of engaging in the ministry, of serving at the altar of God ; 
I would so willingly rest my hope of distinction in the hope 
of being eloquent and useful in preaching the grand doc- 
trines of Christianity, in speaking of God as the Author of 
the universe and the Source of all science, of Christ who 
has made us acquainted with His nature, of the nature and 



200 MASTERMINDS 

possibility of virtue, of the duty of becoming like God ; of 
life, death and immortality." 

Even his physical being seemed at this time to partake of 
the ideal and of the sublime and the ethereal. The Alpine 
air breathed such lightness into his nature that, beside 
himself, he at times fell to shouting, and bounded into 
the air, clicking his heels and sending forth peal after 
peal of joy in sheer exultancy at living. 

Perfectly at home amid the literati and princely figures 
of Paris in their salons of culture and aristocracy, he yet 
much more enjoyed tramping in frayed trousers and with 
a long black beard on his face, as he scaled the Alpine 
bridle-paths of Switzerland. 

"When I entered Switzerland, I came with a heavy and 
desponding heart. One event after another had happened 
to crush everything like cheerfulness in my bosom, and 
though I had not yet gained my one and twentieth year, 
my mind seemed to be sear, and I almost thought I had the 
heart of an old man. But I reposed on the bosom of 
nature, and have there grown young again. From her 
breasts gush the streams of life, and they who drink them 
regain cheerfulness and vigor; I traveled alone; I was on 
foot; solitude was delightful; I could give way to the 
delightful flow of feelings and reflections as I sat on the 
Alpine rocks and gazed on the Alpine solitudes. 
I said to the winds, 'Blow on, I care not for 
ye;' to the sun, 'Hide thy beams, I carry a sun in my 
bosom;' to the rains, 'Beat on, for my thoughts gush upon 
me faster than your drops.' " 

Rome had been reached November 26, 1821. At St. 
Peter's he confessed: "I threw myself on my knees before 
the grand altar, and returned thanks to God for guarding 
me against all the dangers of traveling. My parents and 



GEORGE BANCROFT 201 

every member of my family were remembered, too, in those 
moments of my life, which were too sweet and too solemn 
ever to be forgotten. ' ' 

In European cities again by August, 1822, his meeting 
with Byron and other great creative personalities marked 
a red-letter event. 

Returning to America in the year 1822-23, he became 
tutor at Harvard, though he still looked toward the minis- 
try. 

HIS FOUR FAILURES . 

September 14 he began to preach, speaking from the Sec- 
ond Parish pulpit in Worcester with ' ' an aim to be earnest 
and impressive rather than oratorical, and to write serious, 
evangelical sermons rather than fashionable ones." 

Lack of response grew evident, and though he preached 
thirty -six times this year, he found no encouragement; his 
manner, it was thought, being artificial, his gestures forced, 
and his presentation of truth unacceptable even to his 
father. From his first sermon in Worcester, an essay on 
"Love," to his final attempts in county towns, he gained 
no hearing that would encourage him to go on. "A high 
falsetto and strident voice," unconventional imagery, 
together with other outward forms that were disliked, were 
outward and visible signs that to the people's eye of that 
time ruined the vision he presented of the inner and spir- 
itual life. The verdict of almost all was against him. 
Nevertheless, minds with insight saw the kernel back of the 
ruder shell, amongst whom was Emerson, who declared him- 
self ' ' delighted with his eloquence. So were all. We think 
him an infant Hercules. ' ' 

No pulpit, however, opened, and failure "number one" 
stared Bancroft in the face. 



202 MASTERMINDS 

Failure "number two" was now ready with its blow. 

College, where he was already a Harvard tutor, became 
' ' a sickening and a wearisome place ; not one spring of com- 
fort to draw from." "Trouble, trouble, trouble," was his 
conclusion as to his trials as a teacher. 

"As tutor he is the laughing-butt of all the college," 
wrote his acquaintance, Cogswell, himself a dissatisfied 
tutor and returned German student. 

In December, 1822, Bancroft determined to quit the tor- 
ture and ' ' train a few minds to virtue and honor by start- 
ing a boys' school, the end to be the moral and intellectual 
maturity of each boy, " as " our country needs good instruc- 
tors more than good preachers." 

In this school failure "number three" is here to be 
recorded. Founding in connection with Cogswell the 
Round Hill School at Northampton, he became the leading 
teacher, while his friend was superintendent of the other 
teachers and classes. Sons of wealthy families failed to 
appreciate Bancroft's genius, and he perhaps failed to 
appreciate their leanings. They called him "the crittur," 
and eluding his gaze when they misbehaved in the school- 
room, dropped on all fours. Seeking to win them with 
gifts of peaches in his orchard, they pelted him with the 
pits. 

"Restraining the petulance, and assisting the weakness 
of children when conscious of sufficient courage to sustain 
collision with men," made the Head-master restless. He 
was too creative, original and progressive to tie himself 
down to such detail. So, in September, 1831, he withdrew. 

Failure "number four" must be added to his inability to 
"make good" as a secondary school master. It was as a 
poet. In 1823 he had published a book of poems which fell 
flat as an enterprise, both professionally and pecuniarily. 



GEORGE BANCROFT 203 

Amid these four failures Bancroft wrote text-books for 
schools, and translated ''The Politics of Ancient Greece," 
this being one of the first acts showing his bent toward his- 
tory. In 1829 he followed this with a translation of Hee- 
ren's history of "The Political System in Europe." 
Between 1825-1834 he cultivated his growing power by 
writing seventeen articles for the North American Review, ' ' 
chiefly on European scholarship, also an article on "The 
Bank of the United States. ' ' 

SUCCESS 

By this blazed way of history-writing and politics, in the 
midst of failure, Bancroft is at last finding himself. 

He expressed it thus : 

"I have gained self-confidence, and am determined, as 
the Scripture has it, to work out my own salvation. ' ' 

In 1827 professionally beginning to settle, he anchored in 
other ways as well, and founded a home by marrying the 
daughter of Jonathan Dwight of Springfield, Sarah H. 
Dwight, who presided over his home ten years, till 1837, 
when she died, leaving him four children. 

A stay of several months at the Capitol of the United 
States introduced him in 1831-32 to men and measures of 
State, all of which excited his dormant tastes for the twin 
talents of statesmanship and the writing of history. 

Bancroft's judgment in the science of government, from 
which he never moved, was thus expressed in 1826 in a 
political speech : 

"The government is a democracy, a determined, uncom- 
promising democracy, administered immediately by the 
people or by the people 's responsible agents. The popular 
voice is all powerful with us. This is our oracle. ' ' 



204 MASTERMINDS 

In George Bancroft lay the genius of democracy as it 
exists as the very sap of the liberty-tree of this republic. 
From it he never swerved. In it he found his delight and 
with its essence his soul was one. With it he grew, 
as a part of it, and it as a part of him, and out of it came, 
as flower and fruit from the root, his colossal and inspired 
History of the United States. 1 

In him as an embodiment of independence, Aaron's rod 
budded. For it went back to the rootage of liberty, to his 
father, Aaron Bancroft, at Lexington and Bunker Hill, 
only to come out in the nineteenth century in his remark- 
able history. 

"I have formed the design of writing the history of the 
United States from the discovery of the American Conti- 
nent to the present." Such one day at this time he 
expressed as his inspired purpose. 

It was the vision of his destiny, the call of his prophecy. 

The first volume of this history of the United States 
appeared in 1834. 

So great was the magnum opus that in 1874 after forty 
years of research he brought the history only to the repub- 
lic's start, his tenth volume ending with the conclusion 
of the treaty of peace in 1782. 

Yet it stands nevertheless preeminent as the History of 
the United States; for it embodies the spirit of our coun- 



i' ' Mr. Bancroft was a hearty Democrat. The fact that he really 
believed in the wisdom of the people, as opposed to classes, was 
one of his leading qualifications for writing sympathetically the 
history of the popular movement which led to the foundation of 
the United States, and which is now at the bottom of the admin- 
istration of its affairs. ' ' — Samuel S. Green, librarian emeritus Free 
Public Library, Worcester, in Proceedings of the American Anti- 
quarian Society, April 29, 1891. 



GEORGE BANCROFT 205 

try, its conception, its genius, its birth, its birthrights as 
event after event first took place on the stage of the 
forests and fields of the new world. 

In 1834 Bancroft was defeated for Representative of the 
General Court from Northampton — ' ' failure number five!" 
But such defeats meant nothing. Failure as a preacher, 
tutor, head master, poet, are now with this defeat to be 
swallowed up in the mighty, sweepingsuccess of his life-work. 

Justice Story and Edward Everett led a chorus of great 
men by pronouncing upon the first volumes with great 
favor, the latter calling it: "A work which will last while 
the memory of America lasts, and which will instantly take 
its place among the classics of our language. It is full of 
learning, information, common sense and philosophy, full 
of taste and eloquence, full of life and power. You give 
us not wretched pasteboard men, but you give us real, indi- 
vidual, living men and women, with their passions, inter- 
ests and peculiarities." 

International verdicts came from across the sea. Hee- 
ren from Gottingen wrote, declaring he had the true 
inspiration of the historian, and adding that never had he 
been so agreeably surprised. 

Bancroft himself is carried away with his master theme. 

In 1835, still at Northampton, he writes as to his second 
volume of United States History: 

"The topics are various, grand in their character and 
capable of being arranged in an interesting narrative." 

His home, viewing as it did the beautiful Connecticut 
valley, silver-threaded by the river, began to be a centre 
for literati and minds of great calibre from this country 
and abroad, all of whom, by his enkindled imagination and 
unlocked expression, he bestirred with tales of the Indians, 
and his exposition of the system of American society. 



206 MASTER MINDS 

In 1835 Mr. Bancroft changed his home to Springfield, 
where came the death of his first wife, two years later, 
leaving three children, aged four, two and one. 

August 16, 1838, Bancroft married a second time, uniting 
in marriage with Mrs. Elizabeth Davis Bliss, a widow with 
two boys, and a home in Boston. As a representative Dem- 
ocrat, the young historian was at this time appointed collec- 
tor of the port in Boston by President Van Buren. "While 
in this position he gave a place to Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

June 13, 1838, the second volume of his history Thomas 
Carlyle hailed as conveying "its glimpses of the old prime- 
val forest in its hot, dark strength and tangled savagery 
and putrescence, Virginia planters, with their tobacco 
pouches, galloping amid the 'buckskin kye' in the glades of 
the wildwood, Puritans stern of visage, warm and sound 
of heart!" 

In 1840 was finished the third volume of the history. 



BANCROFT THE STATESMAN 

In 1844 Bancroft was a defeated candidate for Demo- 
cratic Governor of Massachusetts, but still remained in- 
tensely interested in the Presidential contest between Whig 
and Democrat. Polk being elected, Bancroft found himself 
appointed Secretary of the Navy of the United States. It 
was a crucial and telling incumbency, for by his order in 
the contest of ' ' fifty-four forty or fight, ' ' the Oregon boun- 
dary was settled in the Northwest, and in the event of the 
Mexican War it was by his orders that the United States 
commander proceeded to take California and General Tay- 
lor to take Texas. He founded the National Observatory at 
Washington and the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1846. 



GEORGE BANCROFT 207 

But, important as his post, in the midst of the Mexican 
War, Bancroft terminated his portfolio to become ambas- 
sador to England. 

England's stare of wonder at the expansion of the 
United States into its great new territories in the North- 
west, South and "West; English joy at the Mississippi val- 
ley 's inexhaustible new staple, Indian corn ; diplomatic 
confidences as to Prance and Mexico, with which France 
had futilely intermeddled, and conferences also with Queen 
Victoria, — all betray a mind gauged to the world's broad 
platform, but intensely American. To W. H. Prescott, the 
historian, he wrote between the lines of such affairs of for- 
eign states, sighing for ' ' Republican air ! ' ' 

Yet a host of men of letters of the Victorian era made 
the embassy delightful, among them Thackeray, Carlyle, 
Milman, Macaulay, Dickens and Hallam. To his delight 
he found his own books of history equally advertised on 
London stalls as Christmas gifts of a high order, as well 
known and read in London as in Boston. 

''I met him everywhere," said Robert C. Winthrop, 
"and witnessed the high estimation in which he was held 
by literary men like Rogers, Hallam and Allison and Mil- 
man, and by statesmen like Peel, Palmerston and Russell. ' ' 

In Paris in 1847, while he met Guizot, Thierry, Lamar- 
tine and the French King and Queen, he insisted upon 
spending much of his daylight hours searching the archives 
of the French alcoves. In Great Britain politically he 
increased England's enlarged estimate of America and 
secured great international improvements in postal laws. 

Chiefly, however, he found the embassy helpful because 
of his chance for research for facts as to America's found- 
ing, in letters and documentary folios long laid away in 
England's splendid archives. 



208 MASTERMINDS 

The making of modern history he also watched from the 
progress of other nations, notably the spread of Republi- 
canism in Europe and its popularity in France in contrast 
to monarchy's brief appearance on the shifting stage. At 
this period he took breath to exclaim, "I must write the 
history of the Revolution before life ebbs." 

In 1848 the Whig victory in America, electing Gen- 
eral Taylor, unseated him from his post as ambassador and 
enabled him to return to write in his history the opening 
of the Revolution, and "tell how Prescott defended Bun- 
ker Hill, how Franklin swayed France, how the invincible 
Washington not only was the bravest in war, but the wise, 
loving, generous creating father of our blessed form of gov- 
ernment. ' ' 

Upon his return in 1849, he chose to live in New York 
city for eighteen years, until 1867. There the history pro- 
ceeded with rapid strides. Three volumes of the history 
having been completed in the previous eighteen years, seven 
were before him yet to be written. His plan was to write 
history by the almanac, and he recorded each day as he 
passed it in review, adding every detail of value. Many 
thousands of his own money he paid copyists and tran- 
scribers. Many journeys on research for imprinted letters 
he himself undertook, whether it be to the Falls of St. 
Anthony, at the head of the Mississippi, or to great houses 
on plantations in Tennessee. The manuscript once ferreted 
out, it is said, he handled "with the furtive quickness of 
a raccoon." 

"I know not which more to admire," wrote Theodore 
Parker in 1854, "the mighty diligence which collects all 
the facts and words, even the minutest articles of charac- 
teristic manner, or the subtle art which frames them into 
so nice a picture of the progress of the people and the race 



GEORGE BANCROFT 209 

— the most noble and splendid piece of historical com- 
position, not only in English, but in any tongue." 

"What surprised and charmed me," wrote Emerson, 
"the history starts tears and almost makes them overflow 
on many and many a page." 

Yet with all these encomiums and encouragements, Ban- 
croft knew that coping with such a mighty theme, a human 
hand must have limitations, and these he sought to know 
more jealously than laudations. 

In 1858, while on "The Battle of Bunker Hill," he wrote 
Dr. Frothingham, the eminent author of "The Siege of 
Boston," and said: 

"Take your copy of Volume VII, fill it full of cavils, 
criticisms and questionings, especially on the Battle of 
Bunker Hill, and send it to me. Be as severe and hyper- 
critical as I was. ' ' 

His library became a historical arsenal of books and 
documents, growing from twelve thousand to fifteen thou- 
sand to finally thirty thousand volumes, all of which are 
now stored in the Lenox Library, New York. 

In this library, by working solidly mornings and exercis- 
ing afternoons, he produced three hundred words each new 
day in his careful, painstaking creation of the history. 

In 1857 he supported Buchanan, who was against the 
"propensities of the black Republicans." Then he fell 
into sympathy with Douglas. 

Bancroft had a wonderful power to visualize history and 
dissect statesmanship. Yet it is hard to understand that 
a mind which so mystified "Washington with glory, should 
at first utterly fail to see it in Lincoln. "We who have 
preferred another public servant, ' ' was the phrase in which 
he declared himself as to Lincoln, whom he characterized 
as "a President without brains." Further caricaturing 
14 



210 MASTERMINDS 

him as dominated and henpecked by his wife, he ended 
thus : 

' ' Things do not look very promising. " " We suffer from 
want of any organizing mind at the head of the govern- 
ment. " "Our poor country, under incompetent hands, is 
going to ruin." 

Yet for all this he soon atoned, and from all this he was 
soon aroused. He had always stood uncompromisingly 
with the North against slavery. Now he broke entirely 
with the Southern and Northern Democracy, standing 
against the "Nullification of the Constitution" and against 
the "Dred Scot Decision." The compromising party of 
the Democracy he came to call "the bastard race that con- 
trols the organization — this unproductive hybrid begot by 
Northern arrogance upon Southern subserviency." 
"Northern Democracy" was "dreadfully routed," he 
exclaimed, "and handed over to the most corrupt set of 
political opponents." 

By the impending conflict he stood unfalteringly, stating 
to English critics that "our Rebellion is a proof of the 
vitality of Republican principles. Slavery was an anomaly 
in a Democratic country. The doctrine of liberty is proved 
true by the fact that it will not be reconciled with 
slavery. ' ' 

The mighty recoil of the north when Fort Sumter, with 
the Stars and Stripes, was fired upon, he described as "the 
sublimest spectacle I ever knew, the uprising of the irresis- 
tible spirit of a free people in behalf of law, order and 
liberty." 

These views led Bancroft along the track to Lincoln's 
personality, which he finally, however late, saw through, 
accepted, loved, and led the country in crowning with 
tribute. 



GEORGE BANCROFT 211 

In 1862, everywhere recognized as the foremost scholar 
in public life, he was nominated by the Republicans for 
Congress, but declined. 

In the midst of the war he was chosen to voice the cause 
in the great Cooper Institute oration in New York, where 
in America's chief city he stood the dominant oracle of the 
principle at issue. 

At Lincoln's funeral it was he again, above all others, to 
whom the country turned as America's highest exponent 
when it invited him to deliver the funeral oration of the 
martyred President. 

In 1867 appointed minister to Berlin by Johnson's ad- 
ministration, he remained seven years on into Grant 's pres- 
idency, watching the German states moulded by Bis- 
marck into nationalism, and at times himself consorting 
with the King, then in process of becoming an Emperor. 

Bancroft returned at the end of Grant's administration 
to reside in Washington. Even more highly confirmed as 
the foremost American scholar in the public eye, he was 
granted as no other citizen equality with its Senators and 
Congressmen, even on the floors of the Senate and House of 
Representatives. Furthermore, he was granted equality 
with President, Cabinet and Supreme Court judges, who 
exchanged calls upon him as upon one whose station was 
on a level. 

Choosing "Washington as his residence, he selected a 
spacious double mansion but a stone's throw from the 
White House, where behind the hyacinths on the lawn he 
sat down to spend the long afternoon of a life already so 
signal in accomplishment and creative toil. 

Rising at five in summer and six in winter, with break- 
fast at eight, his mornings were sacred to his work on his- 
tory, up to two or three o'clock. No visitors were then 



212 MASTERMINDS 

allowed. After this, often without lunch, at three he 
sprang into his saddle every day and was off to complete, 
even at eighty-five, rides as long as thirty-two miles in 
extent. 

In 1874 appeared the tenth volume of the history, dealing 
with the fourth epoch of the Revolution, and bringing it 
up to the Treaty of Peace in 1781. 

"Scarcely one who wished me good speed when I first 
engaged to trace the history of America remains to greet 
me with a welcome as I near the goal," was his remark at 
the close of the tenth volume. 

The unprecedented popularity of the history necessitated 
edition after edition. 

In the summers he spent the vacation season at Newport, 
in ' ' Rose Clyffe, ' ' a rambling home overlooking the sea and 
half hid by roses, his favorite flower. 

The rest of the year in Washington, with his erect figure 
and his rapidly whitening hair and beard, he was marked 
as he strode the floor of Senate or House, or the Capitol 
Avenue, as a national figure more permanent than passing 
presidents. 

Even the little children in Washington recognized him 
as a father, and cried, "Here comes Grandfather Santa 
Claus upon his fine horse." 

Yet in all of this he was unspoiled and as simple as a 
child. 

Springing off his spirited horse, which he rode daily, he 
would essay, for instance, to rebuckle the girth of one of 
the mount of a troop of young friends galloping by his 
side, saying to a little maid as she thanked him : 

"Don't call me Mr. Bancroft; call me George." 

' ' Are you not very imprudent at your age to be riding on 
horseback?" a contemporary asked. 



GEORGE BANCROFT 213 

"Are you not very imprudent at your age not to be 
riding on horseback?" he replied. 

Here in the spot of which he had said, ' ' I may choose to 
draw my mantle around me before I depart," he did not 
seem so much to grow old as to ripen. 

' ' The true manner of being in old age is to gather a cir- 
cle of friends, who," he said, "are devoted to the culture 
of truth, think with the freedom of men gifted with reason, 
and patient or even fond of differences of opinion. If but 
half dozen of such men would but meet weekly at dinner at 
my house, I should find instruction and delight, and beguile 
infirmities of years by the perennial never-ending enjoy- 
ment of friendship and intelligence. ' ' 

Such was the circle with which he was surrounded, and 
amid which he grew from gray to white. 

Yet this did not mean cessation of industry nor a killing 
of time. 

' ' A game of cards I never can consent to take a hand in 
without shame for waste of time," he declared. 

Only nine years before his death, in 1882, he remarked, 
' ' I was trained to look upon life here as a season for labor. 
Being more than fourscore years old, I know the time for 
my release will soon come. Conscious of being near the 
shore of eternity, I await with impatience and without 
dread the hand which will soon beckon me to rest. ' ' 

Notwithstanding such declarations, in 1887, as though a 
young man he set out, eighty-seven years old, on a journey 
to Nashville, Tennessee, to search for Polk's letters. 

In the years 1882-85 he made the last revision of the sev- 
eral revisions of his ten-volumed history. He had made 
previous revisions, but this he especially chastened and 
pruned. 



214 MASTERMINDS 

In 1888, though eighty-eight years old, he wrote the "His- 
tory of the Formation of the Constitution of the United 
States." 

In reply to a question, he said of the Constitution, "I 
have your letter asking what changes had better be made 
in the Constitution. I know of none. If any change is 
needed, it is in ourselves, that we may more respect that 
basis of primal law." 1 

Bancroft not only wrote, like Cicero, classics on old age 
— he lived a classic old age. 

"Let us old folks cheer one another as we draw nearer 
and nearer to the shores of eternity, which are already in 
full sight," he insisted. "I contemplate my end with per- 
fect tranquillity, thinking death should be looked upon 
neither with desire nor fear. — Old age is like sitting under 
the trees of the garden in early winter; the bloom and ver- 
dure of summer are gone; by their departure it becomes 
easier to see the stars." 

On the last Sunday in December of 1890, Senator George 
Frisbie Hoar called upon the nonagenarian historian in his 
library : 

"It was not an old man's memory of the past," said 
Senator Hoar, ' ' but the fresh and vigorous thought on new 
topics which were suggested to him in conversation. I 
think he exhibited a quickness and vigor of thought, and 
spoke with a beauty of diction that no man I know could 
have surpassed." 

Not long after this, January 17th, 1891, when ninety-one 
years old, nine years before the century with which he 



lOne of his most earnest monographs was one entitled, "A 
Plea for the Constitution Wounded in the House of its Guardians." 



GEORGE BANCROFT 215 

began ended, Bancroft's soul went to the God of his- 
tory. 1 

BANCROFT A PROPHET OF HIS COUNTRY 

Bancroft's life began with the failure of the priest. It 
ended with the halo of the prophet. 

The memory of the little pulpits that refused him is 
swallowed up under the sounding-boards of the nation, 
where he was sought to voice her oracles and interpret her 
destiny. 

Bancroft was a prophet ! 

As the Hebrew prophets were misinterpreted and refused 
the Temple, so was he; as the Hebrew prophet in the 
grand old original of the term wrote the history of the past, 
and the statesmanship of the present, and penetrated and 
shot it through with insight, so did he. He, like them, was 
a historical prophet, a seer, and extracted out of the past the 
laws for the future, whether of judgment or of promise. 
They wrote history, the history of a leading people of the 
world; so did he. They, relegated to obscurity, at darkest 
crises when professional prophets and priests were dumb, 
were called from the places where they were snubbed as 
nobodies or crushed under heel, to become for their nation 
in jeopardy tongues of fire. As they were then called, 
exactly so was he. They interpreted the hand of God in 
history; so did he. That made them prophets; so did 
that make Bancroft a prophet. He was, at his best, a 



' ' iHistorian of America he made it the high purpose of a life 
which nearly spanned a century to show her part in the advance- 
ment of man and from the resources of his genius, his learning 
and his labor to ennoble the story of her birth." — From the inscrip- 
tion upon his tomb in Bural Cemetery, Worcester, Massachusetts. 



216 MASTER MINDS 

prophet of his country in the grand sense of the Mosaic 
and Hebrew seer. So, at the obscurity at first, he was pre- 
dominantly so at the last. In form, patriarchal with white 
beard and piercing eye, with nose like an eagle's beak; in 
spirit well poised, rising against the wind, he led American 
minds up from the hot tangled wilderness, out of the clear- 
ing, to the stage in which God's men have moved according 
to His will, and God's enemies have equally fallen accord- 
ing to His will. 

"It is because God is visible in History," Bancroft 
declared, ' ' that its office is the noblest. ' ' 

"She not only watches the great encounters of life, but 
recalls what had vanished, and partaking of a bliss like that 
of creating, restores it to animated being. History, as 
she reclines in the lap of eternity, sees the mind of human- 
ity itself engaged in formative efforts, constructive 
sciences, promulgating laws, organizing commonwealths 
and displaying its energies on the visible monument of its 
intelligence. Of all pursuits that require analysis, history 
therefore stands first. It is grander than the material 
sciences, for its study is man, the last work of creation, and 
the most perfect in its relation with the Infinite. 

"Each page of history may begin and end with: Great is 
God, and marvelous are His works among the children of 
men. — And I defy a man to penetrate the secrets and laws 
of events without something of faith. He may look on and 
see, as it were, the twinkling of stars and planets, and 
measure their distances and motions, but the life of history 
will escape him. He may pile a heap of stones, but he will 
not get at the soul. ' ' 




John Bartholomew Gough 

(The third picture shows Gough's wife also, and with the first two, taken after 

his reform, is from rare and imprinted daguerreotypes 

owned by his niece) 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 

GREATEST APOSTLE OF TEMPERANCE 

WHILE John Bartholomew Gough as a soul and as 
a personality was discovered in Worcester, Massa- 
chusetts, in the latter part of October, 1842, he 
was born in Sandgate, England, August 22d, 1817, twenty- 
five years before. But the second birth is the real point of 
departure for any man's life so far as it is his own and not 
his ancestors'. Therefore we commence his life at Worces- 
ter, the place of this second birth. 

"Seven damning years of degradation from eighteen 
to twenty-five," as he termed them, landed him in a garret 
in the Massachusetts city. Already his girl wife and his 
infant child 1 had died. He himself was ready to go. He 
aimed at the railroad track, where, having drained a vial of 
laudanum, he would stretch what was left of his rum- 
soaked frame across the rail and end all. To the track 
he did go down. But the Beyond at first held him back. 
Perhaps it would not end all! This drove him again to 
his corner in a cold garret. 

"Though thirty-eight years have passed away," he later 
was accustomed to say, "that garret bedroom, my bed, my 
broken trunk, the window on the roof, the little strip of 
carpet, the water- jug, my shabby clothing as it lay on 
the one chair in the room, are so vividly present before 
me that were I an artist, I could reproduce the scene in 
all its detail." 

iAs gleaned from the death records of Worcester, Gough 's first 
wife died May 20th, 1842, the child living nine days. 



218 MASTERMINDS 

This is an unmarked spot; but it is a great place, for 
it is the birth-place of John Gough's soul. 

"Here," he declared, "I fought that battle alone for 
six days." 

What battle was this, and why did he go back here to 
fight it out and begin again? 

There had not been in the past much reason that he 
should. Things were just the other way. A strolling 
comic singer and stage ''super" when he had four weeks 
before struck Worcester in the fall of 1842, he had written 
his wife at Newburyport to meet him at the stage-door 
and let him take her to a modest home, near the place 
where he had found good employment at skilled labor at 
Hutchinson & Crosby 's. But no sooner was he at home than 
he cleared out his little house of the furniture he had 
bought and sold it for alcohol. Two quarts of stimulant 
for the wife, who by this time was in a decline, he fed to 
himself to appease his uncontrollable thirst. But half 
conscious that his wife's confinement was to end in her 
own death and that of her new-born infant, more like a 
beast than a man, in delirium tremens ten days he lay 
drunk. In this time the young mother died, together with 
the infant. But after the marble touch of her dead fore- 
head, Gough's one instinct was to reach again for the 
flask beneath the pillow. 

Upon this, his employers denied him his wages except 
those they gave him for his needs. But he refused to be 
thus held down. Even what few sticks of furniture were 
left after the funeral, he then sold for whiskey. These 
gone, he sold himself by offering to any drunken set of 
grog-shop bums who would treat him to "a bracer and a 
chaser," his comic songs, his jokes and his ventrilo- 
quism. 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOV OH 219 

Disgrace dragged him down till, as though wholly given 
over to the devil and mocking at all things good, he rose 
up in a church in drunken glee and passed a cuspidor for 
the alms-basin. Fined in court, and now branded legally 
as well as socially, he walked out to insult and taunt all 
that was good, temperance speakers being his especial 
target. 

' ' Yet, ' ' he declared, ' ' a change was about to take place — 
a circumstance which eventually turned the whole current 
of my life into a new and unhoped-for channel." 

It was this event that accounts for his return off the 
street to his struggle in the garret. 



GOUGH'S DISCOVERY ON THE STREETS OF WORCESTER 

It was Sunday evening. All the day he had been lying 
around half drunk in the meadows in the countryside. 
Under cover of night he was sneaking back. But the attic 
would be cold and through the chinks the fall frost sting 
him. He shivered as he clutched his tattered coat and 
knew no other stood between him and winter. He thought 
again of the railroad-track and laudanum. Just then re- 
covering himself from a stagger, he felt — some one tap 
him on the shoulder! Turning to meet, not the clasp of 
a gruff policeman, but the surprise of a kind look, he 
drank in the sensation, because since a long time it was 
the first display of human cordiality. 

"It went right to my heart," he confessed, "and trou- 
bled the waters in that stagnant pool of affection and made 
them once more reflect a little of the light of human love." 

"Mr. Gough, I believe," spoke the gentlemanly voice of 
an unknown person. 



220 MASTERMINDS 

"That is my name," Gough mumbled, and staggered on. 

"You have been drinking to-day." The kind tone ex- 
pelled resentment. 

"Yes, sir, I have." 

' ' Why did you not sign the pledge ? ' ' 

Gough blurted out that he had no hope of ever being 
sober again, adding that he hadn't a friend in the world, 
and would die soon. 

The stranger took his arm, melted his suspicions with 
a look of benevolence, asked if he would not like again 
to be "respectable and esteemed, well-clad, and sitting in 
a place of worship, — enabled to meet old friends, — a useful 
member of society?" 

"No expectation," Gough muttered. "Such a change 
is not possible." 

"Only sign our pledge and I will warrant that it shall 
be so. Sign it and I will introduce you, myself, to good 
friends who will take an interest in your welfare and take 
pleasure in helping you to keep your good resolutions." 

Gough confides to us in his memories that his crushed 
and bruised heart, long a stranger to such words of kind- 
ness, then felt awakening within it new feelings. "A 
chord had been touched," he recounted, "which vibrated 
to the tone of love; hope once more dawned." 

"Well— I will sign it." 

"When?" 

"I cannot do so to-night, for I must have some drink 
presently ; but certainly I will to-morrow. ' ' 

"We have a temperance meeting to-morrow evening. 
Will you sign it then ? ' ' 

"I will." 

"That is right," said he, grasping my hand. "I will 
be there to see you." 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GO UGH 221 

"You shall!" said Gough. 

In his autobiography, which together with "Sunlight 
and Shadow" and "Platform Echoes" we follow as the 
chief sources for his life, he concludes : 

"I went on my way much touched by the kind interest 
which at last some one had taken in my welfare. I said 
to myself: 'If it should be the last act of my life, I will 
perform my promise and sign it even though I die in the 
attempt, for that man has confidence in me, and on that 
account I love him.' " 

The name of the stranger Gough never was to forget 
was Joel Stratton, simply a waiter at a temperance hotel. 
Years after when he lay sick unto death, after an honest 
life as a trusted mechanic in Worcester, the man he 
tapped on the shoulder, then become world-famed, thus 
sought him out. 

"God bless you, Joel Stratton. Thousands are thank- 
ful that you ever lived." Quoting a letter received that 
day from England which mentioned Stratton 's name as 
one "for whom we often pray and whom we all love," he 
read it aloud. 

"When I laid my hand on your shoulder that night, I 
never dreamed all this would come to pass, did you?" 
asked the sick man. 

"No," said Gough, the far-away look in his eyes dim- 
ming with tears, — "But — it — has!" 

Even so deep from a man so simple sank this touch in 
a man so low. It was made in one yet drunk ; a man then 
on his way to his cups at a hotel-bar in Lincoln Square; 
a man about to drain dry the next hour the contents of 
several brandy glasses; a man to go reeling back to his 
garret worse than ever, — and yet underneath all this, 
it penetrated. 



222 MASTERMINDS 

Underneath many a man's hunger and thirst in this 
world, where vico is virtue misdirected and evil is good per- 
verted, is a deeper hunger and thirst of which the former 
is a part, though perverted. He who finds this finds the 
man. The real reformer sees this and seeks not simply to 
destroy a thirst for conviviality, or an inordinate hunger for 
love, but to replace it with higher food and drink and feast 
of soul for which the other was only the base substitute of 
a blind craving. The truest redeemer of his fellows seeks 
not, therefore, to destroy passion, but to tear it from its 
perversion. Like most sin, intoxication is often the per- 
version of the good. The successful restorer of his kind 
will therefore not seek to tear down the mental passion of 
which it is a "sport," but to tear the passion from its 
perversion and leave the true passion in its place. He 
will put something else in place of that which the blind 
reformer only condemns. Unless he does this, no tem- 
perance reform, or any other, will ever perpetuate itself 
either in its converts or in society. 

Joel Stratton, waiter that he was upon man's wants, 
divined this fact — a fact as deep as the mind of the author 
of Christendom. Stratton saw Gough's perverted 
hunger and thirst as the distortion of a deeper hunger and 
thirst that was not satisfied, but that Gough had only 
sought to satisfy in the wrong way. In its place there 
was a good hunger for love and a thirst for the cordial 
of human confidence. At once he offered these objectives 
in place of the cup and company that cheer but inebriate. 
The effect was immediate. The blind hunger and thirst 
for love and confidence with which to feast his soul Gough 
had mistakenly sought in alcoholic conviviality, he now saw 
had led him wrong. He saw that while he could not satiate 
the deeper cravings there, he could elsewhere. He saw 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 223 

that Joel Stratton did not destroy his hunger for love and 
thirst for society, but replaced the lower with a higher, 
whose satisfaction he projected before the lost toper whom 
he had found again. Leaving the base substitute, Strat- 
ton let Gough keep the underlying passion and direct it 
toward this new objective of human hearts till, lo, — in time, 
Gough poured out his soul and gained the cordiality of 
millions who in turn poured their souls back in love and 
confidence! Of this more than most, he could drink with 
men and Joel Stratton showed him how — but in a better way. 

Ah, Joel Stratton ! Your finger, though that of a waiter 
and a serving man, touched 1 the point of magic change, and 
under your touch, though intuitive and infinitely quick, was 
set to working a law of human redemption successful from 
the practice of man's Master Redeemer till to-day. 

Straight in line with all that latest mind studies have 
revealed was Joel Stratton 's second point. He had Gough 
follow emotion with execution — made him make it a part 
of himself — made him take the pledge, and act, not merely 
feel. 

Gough could not get away from that. He awoke in the 
morning when the dawning light fell upon the new hope 
and the night's promise. Yet the fateful pledge in per- 
formance of the promise was to be made that Mon- 
day night. "But bitters in the stomach or death" — he 
moaned, and strung his nerves by a whiskey sling. At noon 
once more he partook of the old stimulant as a farewell 
health to the devil. 

Then began the battle terrible. Under cover of dusk, 
he forced his steps to the lower Town Hall in Worcester. 



i"He touched me!" were the words in Gough 's later speeches 
from which vibrated a world of meaning and of pathos. 



224 MASTER MINDS 

In an old hand-me-down brown overcoat which he clenched 
about his neck to cover his worse undercoat of rags, he 
rose at the time for testimony. 

The love-light of Joel Stratton's searching eyes sought 
him out and again found his soul, so that he dared lift a 
drink-palsied hand and draw the curtain from the chapter 
of his life thus far. 

Invoking an imagination that surprised himself and en- 
thralled his hearers as it was from that time to sway them 
in ever increasing circles, he stood again as twenty-five 
years before at the edge of the English sea and at the 
ocean brink of a mother's love. He recalled his father, 
a pensioner of the English Army, of Corunna, of Talavera 
and of Salamanca. He recalled County Kent where was 
his sire's humble cot, and in which his military sternness 
was the background of the other gentler parent's super- 
abundant affection. Did he tell of smuggler's footsteps 
chasing through the streets as, recovering their trench of 
goods from where it was sunk in the offing, they were 
detected and followed by government officials? Did he 
tell of the ancient castles and martyrs' chapels of the middle 
ages whose ruins he clambered through, feeding his imagi- 
nation with romance? Did he tell of the French Cliffs 
exciting to visions across the channel but twenty-two miles 
away? Did he tell of his schooling up to ten in good 
schools, and of his going to Folkestone at ten to a private 
school where he was such an admirable reader he assisted 
the teacher and thereafter was hired at times to read to 
the gentry ? Did he tell of Wilberforce, the great reformer, 
who was pleased with the boy's ability and who placed 
his hand on his head as if in prophecy? Did he tell of 
his village church and Sunday-school? Did he tell of his 
being accidentally struck on the head with a spade which 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 225 

knocked him senseless and ever after left him liable to 
concussion of the brain from one of which strokes indeed 
he was to drop dead? Did he tell of all this boyhood? 
We know not. Whether he told it all then or not, we are 
not informed. Certainly later in the reeountal he did 
again and again, shooting it through with his realistic 
imagination till his hearers lived it all over with him. 

One thing no doubt he did recall. Of that we are sure. 
It was the friend of his boyhood. 

"Through the mists of memory my mother's face 
would often appear ! ' ' 

That face never was out of his perspective of the past, 
but stood monumentalized at the focus of an avenue of 
light and shade. 

She was a woman of gifted mind so intellectual that she 
was chosen to teach in the village school. Her talents 
descended to her boy, and to her under God he owed a 
grace of expression that was later to cast its spell over the 
hundreds of thousands in both hemispheres. It did not 
seem so then. Then her tears were chiefly visible as her 
tired fingers made lace and failed to sell it after walks 
of eight miles. The scene never left him nor his gleam 
of joy when at one time after a liberal reward for reading 
he gave a crown-piece into her despairing hands. To help 
her he recalled how he gleaned in the fields after the reapers 
with his sister, two years younger, and with her trundled 
the sheafs home to winnow in frugal thrift. This lit up 
his fancy's chambers with a rush light that could not be 
put out even when other lights were failing. 

"Through the mists of memory my mother's face would 
often appear ! ' ' 

The last time in England he recalled it appearing was 
when as a boy of twelve there came the day of his emigra- 
15 



226 MASTERMINDS 

tion to America, June 4, 1829. The sailing-vessel was 
becalmed some miles off Sandgate, a fact his people noticed. 
At first his father, and later his mother rowed out. At 
midnight his mother came from the dark shore, though 
miles away, together with his sister. Up from below came 
her voice. She was the last figure he had seen from the 
shore as she crouched one-half mile in advance on the 
stage-road which carried her son off. Now again she was 
the last to see him, though it was midnight and a long way 
off from the land. Hailed to the deck, he was clasped 
in her arms — to let her go only when the wind freshened 
and the anchor-flukes were hauled from the bottom. 

In the time from 1829 to 1831, a few touches of the life 
on a New York farm in America his memory brushed 
aside, until his leaving for New York with fifty cents in his 
pocket to find Cortland Street under his feet, and himself 
a boy of fourteen, unknown and unbefriended. Then 
he managed to obtain the sum of two dollars and 
twenty-five cents a week at the Methodist Book Concern. 
As a book-binder here he was able to room only in a garret. 
By 1833 another position opened, good enough to allow him 
to send for his mother and sister. Hard times again 
brought loss of work, and his love of fellowship led to con- 
viviality and cheap theatres. Indeed he was "off with the 
crowd" when, while splitting kindling in an attic where 
she was preparing to boil rice for his supper, his mother 
dropped dead! Memory's ineraseable tracks led him back 
where he plunged into further dissipation to drown his sor- 
row — then down, down, down, till, singing his comic songs 
and performing his tricks of ventriloquism in a strolling 
stage company in New England cities, he finally had 
stranded with one such company in Worcester. Here, rum 
his sole comfort, delirium tremens became his sole terror. 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUQH 227 

and the bitters that first gave him sweetness ended in 
giving him bitterness. Parchings, burnings, ringings, 
dead stillnesses, sleeplessness, cramps, temporary blindness, 
falling sensations, objects about him wriggling into foul 
mouths and eyes — all these things, till at last the delirium 
at its worst burst upon him. 

When he told this, no matter be it this the first time, or 
thereafter the one thousandth time, he felt as if he were 
living the battle over. Such impressions had branded their 
way into the brain-tracts ineffaceably. With such 
judgments written there he had only to read the 
handwriting on the wall in order to give his peerless phi- 
lippic against drink, and his motto: "Young man, keep 
your record clean." 

Ending his testimony amid the silence of every one 
in the room in the lower Town Hall, he affixed his signa- 
ture to the pledge and walked out from the ovation ofc" 
hand-clasps, exclaiming : ' ' I have done it ! I have done it ! " 

Shivering spine, flushing hot waves, and fiendish pleas 
to return to his cups pressed upon him, but could not 
induce him to stake all again on a glass. 

"I do agree that I will not use it; and I must fight it 
out," he murmured. 

Replace a lower hunger with a higher hunger, a lower 
thirst with a higher thirst, a lower objective which is 
wrong, not with no objective in its place, but with a 
higher objective which is right — this we have said is the 
one immortal recipe under God for changing and keeping 
changed a life given to perversity. This corollary of 
character the following incident proves conversely. 

Gough went to his employer next morning. "I signed 
the pledge last night," he said. 

"I know you did," half-heartedly said the employer. 



228 MASTER MINDS 

"I mean to keep it," was Gough's desperate rejoinder. 

"So they all say, and I hope you will." 

"You do not believe I will. You have no confidence in 
me." 

' ' None whatever ! ' ' 

Broken-hearted, crushed and paralyzed, Gough says in 
his confession that he returned to his task undone — will- 
power gone, mind gone, enough sense only to feel suddenly 
the small bar of iron he held in his hand wriggle and 
start to move. He griped it. It moved more. He griped 
it harder. Yet it moved so that it seemed to tear the palm 
out of his hand, so that he dropped it but to see it before 
him a coiled snake looking at him with green eyes and 
spitting tongue. His system convulsed at the sight all the 
more because he had sense enough left to know that it was 
worse than a snake, that it was the phantasmagoria of his 
own poisoned mind that hatched it. 

"I cannot fight this out. Oh, my God, I shall die! I 
cannot fight it out," he sobbed. 

We mark now, as a proposition proved back again, how 
the good will of confidence feeds a drunkard's soul-hunger 
and deeper thirst and enables him to fight it out. 

"Good morning, Mr. Gough," came a word of cheer. 
"Good morning. I saw you sign the pledge last night." 

"Yes sir, I did it." 

1 ' I was very glad to see you do it, and many young men 
followed your example. It is just such men as you that 
we want, and I hope you will be the means of doing a 
great deal of good. My office is in the Exchange; come 
in and see me. I shall be happy to make your acquain- 
tance. I have only a minute or two to spare, but I thought 
I would just call in and tell you to keep up a brave heart. 
Good bye. God bless you. Come in and see me." 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 229 

The stranger was Jesse W. Goodrich, a Worcester lawyer. 

"It would be impossible," Mr. Gough has declared, "to 
describe how this little act of kindness cheered me. With 
the exception of Joel Stratton who was a waiter at a 
temperance hotel and who had asked me to sign the pledge, 
no one had assisted me for months in a manner which 
would lead me to think any one cared for me or what 
might be my fate. Now I was not altogether alone in the 
world; there was a hope of my being rescued from the 
slough of despond, where I had so long been floundering. I 
felt that the fountain of human kindness was not utterly 
sealed up, and again a green spot, an oasis — small indeed, 
but cheering — appeared in the desert of life. I had some- 
thing to live for. A new desire for life seemed suddenly 
to spring up. The universal boundary of human sympathy 
included even my wretched self in its cheering circle. All 
these sensations were generated by a few kind words at 
the right time." 

"Yes, now I can fight; and I did fight six days and 
six nights — encouraged and helped by a few words of 
sympathy. He said, 'Come in and see me' — I will. He 
said he would be pleased to make my acquaintance; he 
will. He said, ' Keep up a brave heart ! ' By God 's help / will. ' ' 

So awful was the fight alone in the little garret chamber 
which we have described as the place of the travail of 
Gough 's soul that it took six days' wrestling there in tor- 
ture without food or drink. It was indeed a soul fighting 
against a hell on earth. The walls featured gorgon faces 
writhing into life; the floor squirmed with bloated insects 
whose tendrils gradually wriggled up about his face like 
ten thousand spiders. At the same time knife-blades con- 
torted themselves in his hand till the flesh seemed shredded. 
Yet he kept himself from drink and — conquered ! 



230 MASTERMINDS 

After six days and nights, on the seventh day, sunlight 
began the stimulus of nature's tonic and, the weak image 
of himself, he tottered out into the world of men to go 
back to his task with order and regularity. 

gough 's first speeches 

The Temperance Circle, whose fore-runners, Joel Strat- 
ton and Jesse Goodrich, had saved him, kept about him and 
asked him to narrate again his experience. Its narration 
was sought a second time at a temperance meeting on Burn- 
coat Plain, where in rags and tatters he stood making his 
audience by the vividness of the narration of his battle 
forget that in an over-heated room he had clenched all 
the time the brown overcoat about his neck. 

Never did Luther or any other man so see the demons 
materialize his sin and dance before him as devils to be 
overthrown as did Gough when, with an awakened gleam 
and fierce gaze, he lived the crises over and communicated 
what he felt to the people as an action in a drama. 

Millbury asked him to tell his simple tale from the pul- 
pit. In a new suit of black he waged over the battle, with 
a strange heroic grace and sublime self-forgetfulness — a 
picture of the orator to be. West Boylston found him 
out, and after that many Worcester County towns com- 
bined to complete the discovery of John B. Gough. 

At the end of the year 1842 his mail was filled with 
invitations, and he left his shop-work for a short time. 
But the laid-aside tool was never reclasped, God having 
put into his power against King Alcohol a greater tool, the 
two-edged sword of truth. 

The reaction from over-exertion in such a campaign led 
from exaltation to depression. Tired nature recoiled. His 
emaciated form was pumped past the limit to supply 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGE 231 

blood for his flood of eloquence, and it gave way. Thirty 
towns in succession were upon his itinerary and his system 
broke under the strain. The old head-pain from his boy- 
hood's injury with a spade began to palpitate. For relax- 
ation and a change he took the train for Boston. After 
a play in a leading theatre to which he had been invited, 
he sat down in a grill to partake of oysters, the condiment 
to which was a glass of brandy. Without thinking, in his 
abandon of good fellowship, he drained it and several more. 

It suddenly flashed over him, he recounts, that this was 
a violation of his vow, a betrayal of his temperance friends 
and thousands of Worcester County enthusiasts who had 
trusted him, discovered him, drawn him out! 

It spelled ruin, he was sure. 

Next morning he took the train for Newburyport, the 
opposite way. Returning to Boston again, he dared not 
go on to Worcester, and drained another cup to get up his 
courage. Saturday he compelled himself to return, con- 
fess all, quit the town and the cause and remove forever 
from Massachusetts. 

Burning his papers and appointments, he felt his me- 
teoric career eclipsed, and packed his clothes ready to 
start. 

But the royal group who first stood by understood the 
reaction. They forgave him. They induced him to re- 
sign and fight again. At a large meeting called in Wor- 
cester Town Hall, Gough stood forth and proclaimed his 
broken vow. When he threw himself upon the mercy and 
judgment of the temperance folks as to whether he should 
retire from the field or no, they unanimously voted that he 
should remain. 

Deep down in his own soul, excusable as his lapse was, 
if we look at it from physical causes, he knew there was 



232 MASTERMINDS 

a deeper reason. The first six months he had been en- 
thused by his remarkable reception by Worcester County 
audiences, and he had for strength relied on his own self- 
confidence and on the human confidence of his friends. 
True as was this self-confidence and human confidence to 
turn him, it could not keep him turned. It needed for 
this, strength other than human. 

This is the lesson he confessed to the world as one dearly 
learned and dearly bought. 

"When I signed the pledge," he writes in "Sunlight 
and Shadow," "I was an unbeliever. The appeal to me 
was on the ground of personal advantage; there was not 
a thought of God. My motive in that act and declaration 
was a merely selfish one. In all my struggle I had not 
offered a prayer. I said during the struggle, '0 God, I 
shall die.' I heedlessly used a term. I fought that battle 
alone for six days. I continued for five months an ab- 
stainer from drink. I entered the field as a lecturer, self- 
reliant and boastful. Then I fell. It was after that lapse 
I cried out — 

" 'Oh, my Father, may Thy hand support me and my 
prayer ever be, hold Thou me up and I shall be safe. ' ' ' 



gough's temperance plea wins national fame 

Other counties than Worcester, other states than Mas- 
sachusetts, now called to the pleading of the new voice. 

The first year in three hundred and sixty-five days he 
gave three hundred and sixty-five addresses, for which he 
received but one hundred and five dollars and ninety cents 
in all, out of which he paid his expenses. The sums paid 
him ranged from six dollars to seventy-five cents. But in 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 233 

this short time he obtained fifteen thousand two hun- 
dred and eighteen names of those who swore to stop 
drinking ! 

In 1843 Boston called for his services, a call he much 
feared, as he had spoken almost altogether in towns. 
This was the first of three hundred and twenty-one public 
lectures in Boston besides talks to children. At his 
second November engagement the mammoth auditorium of 
the Odeon became packed to overflowing. 

The Washingtonian wave for temperance, on whose crest 
he rode, included not merely the masses, but the leaders of 
the land — men like N. P. Banks, Franklin Pierce, the 
Beechers, and almost every reformer of the day. 

November 23, 1843, occurred the marriage of Mr. Gough 
to Mary Whitcomb, whom he took from the homestead of 
Captain Stephen Flagg of Boylston, a homestead a por- 
tion of which in later years he reclaimed as his estate 
and over which he made his wife the happy head. But at 
the time of the marriage three dollars and fifty cents was 
all that he owned after he had paid his marriage fee to a 
Worcester minister. All he could take his bride to then 
was one room in Roxbury and a boarding-house table. 

By May, 1844, Gough 's fame spread down the coast to 
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, to 
which places he was soon after called to lecture. Even 
now, however, in his platform mastery of an audience, he 
had to make his way anew, as the audience in New York 
began to go out when he started to speak. In Philadelphia 
they decreased to but occasional handfuls. Speaking from 
a Presbyterian pulpit, even on Sunday he received little 
enthusiasm and no thanks. This, however, was but the 
ice-breaking to a later acquaintance of unbounded enthu- 
siasm and success. 



234 MASTER MINDS 

But back in Worcester County and New England, 
amongst the peoples that discovered him, he found the 
response to his genius that always as in the first days drew 
him out of himself into his best. 

A temperance jubilee in Boston May 30, 1844, celebrated 
this temperance revolution — a kind of revolution which 
Abraham Lincoln declared was the greatest this country 
could ever have. The city was in regalia, radiating ban- 
ners of every hue, and celebrant with jubilant outbursts. 
Every county sent its quota. A children's crusade fol- 
lowed the procession. The old Common swayed with bunt- 
ing, with which the State House was afloat. The climax 
of the day lay in the speeches by the Governor, Mr. Gough 
and others in Tremont Temple, overflowing to the doors 
as it was with the populace. 

Such a wave of enthusiasm sent the name of 
Gough far away. He was called back to New York, which 
again claimed him — not half-heartedly this time, but with 
fervent acclaim as the peerless Apostle of Temperance and 
the voice of the whole movement. In these addresses he 
won the great metropolis of America and proceeded back 
to Boston to find Faneuil Hall packed to the doors and win- 
dows to hear him. 

At the end of 1844, best of all to welcome him was the 
growing army of human faces of men who had taken the 
pledge and kept it and who in a triumphant host greeted 
the reformer in ever increasing numbers. 

Next, Philadelphia withdrew the cold shoulder, and the 
beginning of the year found Gough opening a great cam- 
paign in Pennsylvania. It was not a movement of mere 
emotion. Medical colleges sent their students in flocks 
to hear him, and colleges closed their recitations to have 
him touch their youth with his fire. New Jersey's Legis- 



JO EN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 235 

lature opened its doors, and so did New York's. Prisons 
and penitentiaries he equally overcame by the spell of his 
sway. 

In advance of the Washingtonian idea, splendid as it 
was in its moral suasion over the individual, Mr. Gough 
advocated legal movement against the saloon as the fortress 
of King Alcohol. So potent was his contention against 
them that traps by liquor sympathizers were set on more 
than one occasion to defeat and snare him. 

Slanders, threats, and even hints at assassination, accu- 
mulated. The most notorious trap was partially success- 
ful. 

It was laid in New York in September, 1845. 

Playing upon his well-known aversion to priggishness, 
especially before the laborer or poor man, who might 
expect him on account of his risen estate to show his 
superiority, a man accosted him in New York city on 
Broadway. 

"I used to work in the same shop with you in this city. 
I suppose you are pious now and have got to be so proud 
that you would not drink a glass of soda with an old 
shopmate. ' ' 

"Oh, yes; I'll drink a glass of soda with anybody; I'll 
drink a glass with you if you will go in here," said Mr. 
Gough, pointing to the celebrated Thompson Fountain. 

1 ' We shall never get served there. I know a place where 
we can get better soda than we can here." 

Down Chambers Street to Chatham they proceeded to a 
small shop, to which Mr. Gough, taunted by the man's 
reference to his being too proud to drink a cup of soda 
with a workingman, innocently went. 

Calling for soda with raspberry syrup, with his hand over 
the brim the supposed laborer passed Gough his glass. 



236 MASTER MINDS 

Drinking it unsuspectingly for soda, he perceived when he 
reached Broadway he had been drugged! It went to his 
brain, and half-consciously taking the relief of a draught 
of brandy some one passed him in a grocery store, he 
wandered about the streets till dark. Accosted by a 
woman who offered to take him home, he wearily was led 
like a half-asleep child. In his stupor he was given fur- 
ther drink. At last, after he was there in this place over 
Saturday, his friends were notified, and the fact that he was 
found there in a questionable place published abroad, the 
very thing desired by the conspirators. 

' ' Oh, take me away from this, ' ' was the moan with which 
he met several distinguished gentlemen of Brooklyn, who 
so absolutely believed in his integrity and on his being the 
dupe of a trap that they took him to their own homes. 

The celebrated Mount Vernon Congregational Church 
of Boston, headed by Dr. Kirk, its pastor, verified the above 
steps of Gough's own account, exonerating him from all 
censure. 

Rev. Theodore Cuyler, Mr. George Ripley of Brooklyn, 
with the best of the press and pulpit everywhere, expressed 
their faith in Mr. Gough and their pity for him as the 
victim of a nefarious plot. 

A flood of lecture calls demonstrated the people's faith, 
and commencing at Boston he began a triumphant tour 
extending into New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia and 
Princeton; thence south to Baltimore, Washington, Rich- 
mond and other Southern cities, to which he was recalled in 
June, so intense was the impression awakened by the cam- 
paign. At all these meetings the pledge was the focal part 
and specific issue, thousands upon thousands signing their 
names. Cold-water armies, followed by crusades of chil- 
dren, everywhere enrolled their enlistments. 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 237 

Every public speaker is criticisable for his human im- 
perfections which men in private life have equally, or more, 
yet hide behind the coward's castle of privacy. 

The defects of his qualities Gough's enemies harped 
upon, styling him at different times "humbug," "theatri- 
cal performer," "mountebank," "clown," "buffoon," 
"ungraceful," "homely," "round-shouldered," "crooked- 
legs," "hypocrite," "mercenary scoundrel," "consummate 
villain," "base slanderer," "liar," "drunkard," "wear- 
ing long hair, " " wearing jewelry, " " sensual mouth, ' ' with 
"idiotic ravings," "a rehash of other people's thoughts," 
"balderdash" and "insane bellowings." 

Such things are but the reverse side of the impressions 
which formed the positive face of other men's convictions, 
and they merely added to his fame, a fame unsurpassed 
by any great American orator. The greatest of these them- 
selves admitted this. Henry Ward Beecher once exclaimed, 
"I never was intoxicated but once. That was when I 
heard John B. Gough." 

In August, 1847, he crossed the line into Canada, getting 
a first taste of the English spirit which later fanned the 
British homeland into flame. 

In Faneuil Hall, Boston, occurred a riot on October 
21st, incited by two hundred thugs and topers. First 
hurling abuse, then joining hands, they advanced upon the 
platform to seize Gough. The temperance men gathered 
around the orator and finally seamen from the receiving 
ship Ohio ejected the leaders of the attack. Further lec- 
tures proceeded in the hall, where Gough's tongue of fire 
captivated assembly after assembly. 

Though not at all suffering stage-fright at such a time, 
at others Gough was sorely afflicted with it. 



238 MASTERMINDS 

Before his one hundred and sixty-first lecture in Boston, 
he paced the street without, unable to force himself within. 
The hour was up, the entrances crowded. At the last 
moment he gained courage to press his way in, but was 
refused admittance. 

1 ' I wish you would keep me out, ' ' he replied to the door- 
keeper. 

"Ah, Mr. Gough, is that you? — Make way there!" 

"I haven't a thought. I can say nothing to-night," he 
confessed to the chairman. 

' ' Ladies and Gentlemen : I have nothing to say, ' ' he con- 
fessed to the people as he stood up. "I almost wish I 
could feel as a gentleman in New York told the people he 
felt when he addressed them. 'I am never afraid of an 
audience. I imagine the people are so many cabbage 
heads.' I wish I could feel so." 

Then struck by a counter thought, he exclaimed : 

' ' No, I do not wish that. When I look into your f aces — 
an assemblage of rational and immortal beings, and re- 
member how drink has debased and dragged down the 
loftiest and noblest minds — I cannot feel so; I thank God 
I cannot feel so." 

Then through the flood-gates opened up by this counter- 
suggestion, flowed an hour and a half of convincing elo- 
quence. 

It was an unconscious secret of Gough 's hold of an 
audience that he so agreeably disappointed them at first. 
His first appearance was like Lincoln's, ungainly and un- 
prepossessing. 

"I hope," said one chairman in introducing him, "he'll 
prove far better than he looks to be" — a thing which he 
invariably did. 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOV GH 239 

Five miles from Worcester and a mile and a half from 
Boylston lay the slope of rolling farm-lands belonging to 
the Flagg family. As a place of relief from human wear 
and tear, so impressed was the weary lecturer with the 
overlook of the hillside farm from which he took his wife 
that, as he stood on its uplands with Mr. Stephen Flagg on 
a bright morning in May, he declared: 

"What a fine site for a house!" 

At once acting upon the inspiration of the moment, 
he had twenty-six acres conveyed to his hands. Here he 
planted the stately cedars that now mark it as an ideal 
rural retreat, well hid from the road, yet overtopping the 
peaks of surrounding trees and commanding the gentle 
slopes for miles beyond. 

In 1848-50 his lectures went on over the entire country, 
casting their spell over a wider and wider field. There 
came lists of applications he could not possibly fill. 
Pledges to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand 
were signed. In Cincinnati alone there were seven thou- 
sand six hundred and forty-nine, in Detroit two thousand 
four hundred and forty-six, and in 1851 at Buffalo after 
one engagement five thousand and eighty-two. Literary 
men and Congressmen at Washington whose streets had 
been lined with saloons and bars came alike under the 
magic of his convictions. 

' ' The farther they fall the deeper they go, ' ' was Gough 's 
verdict, as he made no exception to the rich and respectable 
drunkards, but even blamed them more. "No respecter 
of persons," he allowed no class distinctions, but man- 
fully made his plea to all men equally. 

In himself, showing what wonderful changes were pos- 
sible, Gough impersonated what he said, and as a violent 
man took the kingdom by force. At times he would end 



240 MASTERMINDS 

his lecture to find blood upon his hands which he had 
clinched and driven unconsciously against near objects 
so that he broke the skin and tore the flesh in his re-enacted 
fight with the devil of drink. 

"I have said and I believe," he declared, "that when 
a man is thoroughly absorbed in his theme — when his sub- 
ject fills him — he will so far forget all and everything in 
his intense desire to make his audience feel as he wishes 
them to feel that physical suffering will not only be en- 
dured and triumphed over, but he may become uncon- 
scious of pain in the overwhelming power of his subject on 
himself. I know that on the subject of temperance I feel 
what I say. I know it. I must feel on this theme deeply. 
No lapse of time can weaken the intensity of my feeling. 
Burned into my memory are the years of suffering and 
degradation, and I do feel deeply and must ever on this 
great question. Sometimes when speaking on temperance, 
I seem to be absolutely engaged in a battle, the enemy 
before me — not as a man of straw, but the real living hor- 
ror; and in the wrestling with that, face to face, hand to 
hand, again, I have forgotten audiences and circumstances, 
sickness and pain under the power of this reality. ' ' 

GOUGH'S VICTORY IN ENGLAND 

In the summer of 1853 he began a victorious and sweep- 
ing campaign in England. It was not merely a popular 
ovation, but a revolution of sentiment that stirred the whole 
empire from aristocrat to commoner. The impression was 
that of "a great original, a genius, and no servile 
copy." 

His first fear was that the English and Scotch would 
demand the academic and scholastic in place of his own 



JO EN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGE 241 

self-realized utterance. He forgot that the truly cultured 
discern and discover and welcome the original genius in 
distinction from the scholastic, with whose plethora they 
are surfeited. He forgot Lowell's saying that he who 
speaks with the full force of unconscious sincerity says that 
which is at once ideal and universal. Therefore, because 
he mistrusted his English reception he borrowed two hun- 
dred and fifty dollars to pay his fare back in case of the 
anticipated failure. 

"John, my son, don't fear," said Lyman Beecher, grip- 
ping his hand, ' ' Go, and in God 's name talk to the people. ' ' 

His appearance on the platform was but a foil for the 
unsheathed sword that suddenly gleamed forth before the 
astonished assemblage piercing to the thoughts and intents 
of the heart. 

Exeter Hall, London 's great auditorium, full to the doors 
with Englishmen, fell under the spell of his power. "As 
he willed," the London Weekly News recounted, "it was 
moved to laughter or melted to tears." 

England, trained for centuries to detect sham and to dis- 
cover reality, surpassed America in acclaiming the virtue 
of his voice, which was but a replica of his acts. England 
discerned it was not fine words, but life, flesh and blood in 
drama, tragedy, comedy. 

So the verdict of England's people was, "No servile 
copy, but a real original." While he held his audiences 
two hours by his tongue of fire, the British Press said he 
could have held them till midnight. He was at this, the 
zenith of his international fame, but thirty-seven years old, 
and had been but twelve years on the platform since his 
first discovery in the hills of Worcester. 

Nothing was too good for this new knight errant in the 
list of the liquor tourney. For liquor voices England's foe 
16 



242 MASTERMINDS 

— its worst foe — which had entrenched itself in the very 
nerves and corpuscles of her life and the best in England 
felt they had in him a master and a victor. 

Distinguished leaders in England celebrated at Sand- 
gate his thirty-seventh birthday, which Mr. Gough com- 
memorated on the spot of his birth. 

At Sandgate the townsmen unhitched the horses from the 
carriage and drew the former village boy back to his home 
with their own hands! Gough always suffered from 
modesty and hated being lionized. At this time he pro- 
tested, saying constantly under his breath: "I don't like 
it. I don't like it." 

The Earl of Shaftesbury, introducing him at Old Drury 
Lane in 1854, voices the best sentiment of Britain when he 
said that the value of Gough 's labors "could not be over- 
rated, but were above all praise." 

English critical judgment, the keenest tempered and lev- 
elest in the world, appraised him thus through the pen of 
the celebrated Dr. Campbell: 

' ' The voice of Mr. Gough, ' ' whom the critic described as 
appearing humbly like a person who had still to learn 
that he was somebody, ' ' unites to carry on the deception. At 
the outset it is merely strong and deep, but it gives no sign 
of the inherent flexibility and astonishing resources both 
of power and pathos. It is in perfect keeping with the 
entire outer man which at ease seems to draw itself up to 
the smallest possible dimensions, but when fired becomes 
erect, expanding in magnitude and stature so as to present 
another and entirely new man. Mr. Gough is a well- 
adjusted mixture of the poet, orator and dramatist. Ora- 
torically he is never at fault. There is nothing false. All 
is truth. The result is undeviating pleasure and irresist- 
ible truth." 



JOHN BARTHOLOMEW GOUGH 243 

The Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Duncan McLaren, 
headed Scotch enthusiasm with an equal reception. 

So prolonged was the reception that Gough was called 
into every part of the United Kingdom, which refused 
to let him go, and what he thought would be an uncer- 
tain stay of two months, by 1854 lengthened out to two 
years. 

Cruikshank, the artist; Newman Hall, John Bright, and 
other men who incarnated English genius, formed his in- 
nermost circle of friends and supporters, often even travel- 
ing with him on his remarkable tours. Upon these tours lec- 
tures were demanded not only singly, but in series of twelve 
and thirteen, in places where he frequently had to stay 
five weeks at a time. 

He conquered Oxford, passing through the ordeal of 
rapid-fire jokes with which they try out their speakers. He 
brought the banter to an end by proposing they select a 
champion to contest the theme with him in a bout of ten 
minutes each. They could not present a man. Thus floor- 
ing them, Gough came out at the end victor, master of the 
situation and beloved by his hearers, who invited him again 
to speak the next day, and gave their undivided attention 
and allegiance. 

Public sentiment as to drink, the great foe of the Eng- 
lish race, Gough visibly and sensibly affected even in a 
people where he had to cut prejudice against the grain. 
Whether the effect was upon the thousands of outcasts and 
the wrecks of men and women, or upon the flower of Eng- 
lish society at such centres as Hartwell House, the result on 
the English mind was the same — a great upheaval of hearts. 
This was the result of his four hundred and thirty-eight 
lectures and his tour of twenty-three thousand two hun- 
dred and twenty-four English miles. 



244 MASTER MINDS 

Home to America in August, 1855, calls for Gough's 
speeches came from as far as the new "West. 

Yet Gough the man was never spoiled because he had 
become Gough the publicist and the international oracle of 
temperance. He loved nothing so much as the domestic 
peace of Hillside, his Worcester County home on the hills. 
At the little Boylston Church he kept his touch with the 
higher efforts of the soul, where he not only rested, but 
strove, teaching in the Sunday-school and starting a great 
rural revival. 

In April, 1857, after farewell ovations in the great cities, 
he began a second English tour. 

Moral suasion had become so much the habit of Mr. 
Gough that he perhaps failed to appreciate the political 
power of prohibition as championed by Neal Dow of Maine. 
In general the effect of such prohibition up to that time he 
called, compared with moral suasion, "a dead letter." 
Among those who were reformers only according to the 
letter of the law, this stirred up a hornets' nest, and operat- 
ing in England, caused jealous enemies to rise up to try to 
undo him. To silence these writers who sought as with a 
muck-rake to drag up the past as a means of turning pub- 
lic sentiment against him, he laid their statements before a 
court of equity. Governors of the United States, college 
presidents, Henry "Ward Beecher, Lyman Beecher, mem- 
bers of Congress and leaders throughout America sent 
memorials to England proving the falsifiers' claims untrue. 
But led by Dr. P. R. Lees the tide of slander went on 
till June 2d, 1858, the Court of Exchequer, "Westminster, 
brought the case to its conclusion and the verdict was ren- 
dered in Gough's favor and retraction demanded from Lees. 

During these three years until August, 1860, the back- 
fire only intensified Gough's supporters, under whose 




"Young Max, Keep Your Record Clean!" 
(From the original painting of John B. (iough on the public platform, 
in Mechanics Hall. Worcester) 



JO EN BARTHOLOMEW GOV GH 245 

auspices he delivered six hundred and five lectures, travel- 
ing forty thousand two hundred and seventeen miles, where 
five hundred thousand hearers heard him and twelve thou- 
sand signed pledge-cards. In historic Exeter Hall alone 
he delivered ninety-five addresses. 

"Thousands upon thousands in Britain bless him for his 
work's sake," was the press conclusion of a notable organ. 
"Mr. Gough will ever be esteemed one of the most eminent 
trophies of the return to that higher standard of nature's 
eloquence. ' ' 

"young man, keep your record clean I" 

In America from May 14th, 1843 (a time before his Eng- 
lish tour), till June, 1869, he delivered six thousand sixty- 
four public addresses and traveled two hundred seventy-two 
thousand two hundred and thirty-five miles. Even by 1853 
he had obtained two hundred fifteen thousand one hundred 
and seventy-nine pledges, the results of which in reborn 
men, happy wives and saved children, no one can accu- 
rately computate. 

"Young man, keep your record clean!" This was his 
last injunction to mankind. 

February 15, 1886, at Frankford, near Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania, he had spoken twenty minutes to a packed 
audience when, uttering these burning words which seemed 
to focus the light of his whole life, he lifted his hand to a 
pain back of his scarred forehead, and fell backward, 
stricken with apoplexy. Three days later, aged sixty-nine, 
he died. 

A faded handkerchief spotted with a woman's tears was 
the most signal emblem his wife placed as the badge of 
mourning upon his casket at the funeral service in 



246 MASTERMINDS 

Boylston. It bespoke louder than anything else the speak- 
ing silence of thousands upon thousands of regenerated 
homes. 

Decades before, in England, the faded handkerchief had 
come to Mrs. Gough with these words: 

' ' I am very poor. I married with fairest prospects. But 
my husband took to drinking, and everything went until at 
last I found myself in one miserable room. My husband 
lay drunk in the corner and my sick child lay moaning on 
my knee. I wet this handkerchief 1 with my tears. My 
husband met yours. He spoke a few words and gave a 
grasp of the hand, and now for six years my husband has 
been to me all that a husband can be to a wife. I have 
brought your husband the very handkerchief I wet that 
night with my tears, and I want him to remember that he 
has wiped away those tears from my eyes. ' ' 



iThis pathetic memento, with many another, lies in a collection 
at the house of John B. Gough 's niece, Mrs. Charles G. Keed of 
Worcester. Here is the little Bible, the gift of his mother, inscribed 
by her hand, lying strangely enough side by side with the illuminated 
vellum greetings signed on his victorious return years later by 
England's peers, church canons and reformers. Here by the score 
are Cruikshank's original drawings, of which Gough, Cruikshank's 
bosom friend, made a complete collection from the artist's first 
hand work. Original copies of Gough 's lectures, illustrating the 
way he prepared them, also lie in this collection, with their care- 
fully penned words, each letter a half inch in size, so that the 
lecturer if using manuscript could see it easily. 




Senator George Frisbie Hoar 
Tn Later Life and Early Manhood 
(The corner vignette is from a ra-re, imprinted daguer- 
reotype in the possession of his daughter) 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 

AN AMERICAN IDEAL STATESMAN 

THE family tree of George Frisbie Hoar, from which 
he sprang August 29th, 1826, is most interesting 
and distinguished. Its branches have sheltered 
many of the greatest movements of our time and of past 
times. Its roots started with our history. But that was 
not his career. He began as any other man begins when 
he took root for himself in his own place and in his own 
way. His autobiography began when he came to himself. 
"There is," he once said, "once in a while, though the 
quality is rare, an historian or an author, a writer of fiction, 
or a preacher or a pastor, or an orator, or a poet, or an 
influential or beloved citizen, who in everything he says or 
does seems to be sending a personal message from himself. 
The message is inspired and tinctured and charged and 
made electric with the quality of the individual soul. We 
know where it comes from. No mask, no shrinking modesty 
can hide the individual. Every man knows from whom it 
comes and hails it as a special message to himself. We say 
that is from my friend to me ! The message may be read 
by a million eyes and reach a million souls. But every 
one deems it private and confidential to him. ' ' 

In this very way George Frisbie Hoar comes to us 
because he at first came to himself and at last gave himself. 
Had he not come to himself, all the ancestors in the world 
would have made nothing but a bright background for his 
dismal failure. It is because he came to himself that he 
gets a hold of ourselves. 



248 MASTERMINDS 

He came to himself as a student of truth, as a statesman, 
and as a ripened soul. 

AS A STUDENT OF TRUTH 

He entered Harvard when sixteen years old, in the year 
1842, after preparation in Concord and under the famous 
preceptress, Sarah Ripley. As a student he confessed him- 
self a time-killer, a lounger and an idler. 

''President Eliot," he remarked, speaking of his life as a 
boy, "said he had a great respect for his little self. I can 
not say that of my young self at Harvard. My time was 
largely wasted in novel-reading, or reading books which 
had not much to do with the college studies, and lounging 
about my rooms or that of the other students. ' ' 

"Old Dr. Bartlett, who always uttered what was in his 
heart, said that after my two oldest brothers and I had 
grown up, Samuel Hoar's boys used to be the three biggest 
rascals in Concord. ' ' 

But the mischievous lad and student loafer came to him- 
self, underwent a great reaction and witnessed this counter 
confession : 

"When I graduated, I looked back on my wasted four 
years with a good deal of chagrin and remorse. I think I 
can fairly say that I have had few idle moments since. I 
have probably put as much hard work into life as most men 
on this continent — certainly I have put into it all the work 
that my physical powers, especially my eyes, would permit. 
I studied law in Concord the first year after graduation. 
I used to get up at six o'clock in the morning, go to the 
office, make a fire, and read law till breakfast-time. Then I 
went home to breakfast and got back in about three quar- 
ters of an hour, and spent the forenoon until one diligently 
reading law. After dinner, at two o'clock, I read history 



■• 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAB 249 

until four. I spent the next two hours in walking alone in 
the woods and roads. At seven I read a little geometry 
and algebra, reviewing the slender mathematics which I 
had studied in college, and then spent two hours in reading 
Greek. I read through Thucydides, Homer, and Xeno- 
phon 's Hellenica, and some other Greek books in that year. ' ' 

On Sunday his programme began with that observance 
of the Sabbath which he maintained weekly and for the 
protection of which he later headed the Sabbath Protective 
League. 1 

"I have no remorse for wasted hours during those two 
years in Concord, ' ' he concluded. 

By this act, the assertion of a richly endowed but idle 
will, and the putting of it to work on his own responsibility, 
George Frisbie Hoar came to the psychological moment of 
his life. By this moral act he unlocked the latent layers 
of his soul which otherwise would have slept uselessly on. 



iFor eight years previous to his death Senator Hoar was Pres- 
ident of the Sabbath Protective League, and he thus expressed himself: 
"There is in my judgment no more commanding public duty than 
attendance at church on a Sunday. ... I believe we best main- 
tain the country we love, and the State of which we are a part, and 
of whose government we have our share of personal responsibility, by 
a constant attendance on the public and social worship of God. I 
believe it to be to the interest of the country, of the town, and of 
the individual soul that the habit be not abandoned. ... It 
would, in my judgment, if that were to happen, be impossible to 
maintain liberty, self-government, or any form of republic, which 
depends for its success on the character of its citizenship. ... I 
know the temptations on a summer's day to get into the country, 
among fields and forests, and, to use a familiar phrase, to stretch 
your legs by a walk or a ride. But whether it be better to do 
it may possibly depend on the question whether the legs or the 
soul be the most important part of a man." 



250 MASTERMINDS 

This lesson is nowhere more vividly pictured for our age 
than in Abbey's mural painting in the Public Library at 
Boston, of Sir Galahad in the quest of the Grail. 
Abbey paints here no mere brilliant maze of mediaeval color 
and chivalrous romance. It is alive with a vital applica- 
tion. It is an exponent of every thoughtless heir who 
comes to himself. 

First is the favored youth, born in the purple. The good 
will of heaven is prefigured by divine benedicite. Red 
cardinals endue him in pomp and ceremonial with every 
indulgence of Holy Church. The school confers its finest 
teacher — a teacher without force and who catered to the 
child, not daring to cross his assumption that he could get 
everything for nothing. For did not the State, King 
Arthur and the Round Table set him apart and decorate 
him as picked flower of knight errantry to seek the Grail, 
remove the spell of the city's sin and wear the sword 
Excaliburf 

Everything is to be done for him, and he need do 
nothing for himself. 

Triply blessed with all the world had to give — Church, 
State and School — he sets out — but to fail! 

This is depicted in the tragedy at the end wall. He can- 
not remove the spell from the city which lies enshadowed 
by evil while rulers and citizens sleep as moral corpses. 
Humbled to the dregs of his soul by his failure, crushed 
with defeat, the proud knight turns empty away, learning 
the great lesson of life that, even royally backed as he was, 
he could not get something for nothing; he could not be 
victor by having everything done for him and by doing 
nothing for himself. 

Suddenly, on the next wall, a voluptuous temptress, beau- 
tifully gowned, rides by. His eye sees in her lap the skulls 



GEO ROE FBI SB IE HOAB 251 

of her moral victims. He sees — refuses — turns — exerts for 
the first time in his life moral struggle and exerts it with 
sweat of blood. Here springs up within him the motor 
whose friction generates a current that connects his will- 
power with the power of the Infinite. Not only does it 
unlock the pent layers of moral energy in his own soul, but 
back in the city it dispels the cloud of sin and 
moral stupor! King and people awake to righteousness 
and sin not. Before him falls the drawbridge over 
which, empowered with invisible power, he slays the vices 
and releases the virtues. Resisting even with virtue's 
daughter a stay of duty, he pushes on to the gleam incar- 
nadined in the Grail whose Christ-blood he now beholds. 
He ends the quest in a barque that breasts the crimson sea 
of glass mingled with fire until it bears him to the entrance 
to the Holy City. 

The determinant of destiny for that young knight was 
just at this point in the moral tragedy — not where in mag- 
nificence everything was done for him, but where, the first 
time in his life, alone and humbled, he did something for 
himself and brought emotion into execution. 

Just at this point was Hoar's determinant of destiny! 
Here under God through the exertions of his own will he 
came not to his ancestral, but to his own birthday; he 
attained not to his inherited, but to his own birthrights. 

AS A STATESMAN 

Thus reborn, first as a student of truth, he next came to 
himself as a statesman. 

Whittier once said to a young man wishing to live a life 
of worth : Give yourself to some great cause not yet become 
popular. When Hoar began his manhood, such a 
cause had its underground stream then existent. It took 



252 MASTER MINDS 

hold of his emptied soul, became the fountain-head of his 
life, and altogether possessed him. Had it not been for 
this, his career, at least as it was, would not have been. He 
supposed, he confessed, that he was absolutely without 
capacity for public speaking, expected never to be married, 
perhaps to earn twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a year, 
which would enable him to have a room of his own in some 
quiet house and to earn enough to collect rare books. 

A harmless book- worm — such was his ambitious program. 
But something happened! 

It was the pulse of this new young cause throbbing 
through the East. 

"When I first came to manhood," he recounted, "and 
began to take part in public affairs, that greatest of crimes, 
human slavery, was entrenched everywhere in power in 
this republic. Congress and the Supreme Court, commerce 
and trade and social life alike submitted to its imperious 
and arrogant sway. Mr. Webster declared that there was 
no North and that the South went clear up to the Canada 
line. The hope of many wise and conservative and, as I 
now believe, patriotic men, of saving this country from 
being rent into fragments was in leaving to slavery forever 
the great territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific, 
in the fugitive slave law, a law under which freemen were 
taken from the soil of Massachusetts. There was some- 
thing in that struggle with slavery which exalted the 
hearts of those who had a part in it, however terrible, as no 
other political battle in history. I became of age at just 
about the time when the Free-soil party was born. It 
awakened in my heart in early youth all the enthusiasm 
which my nature was capable of holding, an enthusiasm 
which from that day to this has never grown cold. No 
political party in history was ever formed for objects so 



GEORGE FBISBIE HOAR 



253 



great and noble. It was a pretty good education, better 
than that of our university, to be a young Free-soiler m 
Massachusetts." In 1848, with young Hoar's father a 
founder, the Free-soil movement, later to grow into the 
Eepublican party, came into being in the famous Free-soil 
convention in Worcester. 

The heroism of the cause was everywhere in the air. 
Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell and Bryant were baptizing 
the movement with song. 

Such was its force exerted upon the young man's imagi- 
nation that in 1847 its pressure had drawn him to settle in 
Worcester, the city that mothered it at the Commonwealth's 

"I have never regretted the choice," he once concluded, 
"and have spent my life there, except when in Washington, 
for considerably more than half a century. Worcester com- 
bines the youth and vigor and ambition of a Western city 
with the refinement and conveniences and the pride in a 
noble history of an old American community. I can con- 
ceive of no life more delightful for a man of public spirits 
than to belong to a community like that." Shortly before 
the end of his life he said, "I believe I shall die this after- 
noon. I have done the best I could. I have always loved 
this town and its people. 

To the law-office where he was beginning practice in 
Worcester, came such leaders as Sumner, Adams, Andrew, 
Palfrey, Garrison, Burlingame, Howe, Dana, Henry Wil- 
son and Samuel Hoar. 

Though drawn irresistibly to settle by the cradle of the 
new passion, believing that where the heart is the home is, 
beyond that young Hoar was silent and an onlooker. 

But in 1850 events were rapidly coming to a crisis. 
Webster's Seventh of March Speech broke faith with his 



254 MASTERMINDS 

Free-soil supporters and raised the Free-soil party to a 
pitch of unbounded excitement against the extension of 
slavery into the territories. 

"Hoar! Hoar!" he heard cried at a great Mechanics 
Hall meeting in the autumn of this year, 1850, when the 
expected speaker failed to appear. Reddening in confu- 
sion, the young man stammered an excuse. 

"Platform! Platform!" insisted the people. He spoke, 
and his speech found out a new vein and evoked in 
him confidence in himself as a speaker, while it evokpd in 
the people such a reception that thenceforward he was con- 
stantly called upon. Thus he began as a statesman. In 
the meantime Judge Emory Washburn had received Hoar 
into partnership for practice in Worcester County, a prac- 
tice he soon was to succeed to, owing to the election of 
Judge Washburn as Governor. 

From 1849 to 1869 so great grew the professional service 
that at one time or other Hoar became counsel for every one 
of the fifty-two towns of Worcester County. Under the 
strain, too much for any man, his health broke in 1868, and 
he departed for Europe. Up to this time, at the early age 
of twenty-five, he had been elected to the Legislature and 
served the House in 1851, where he was a member of the 
Law Committee. He declined reelection. In 1857 his 
party sent him to the Massachusetts Senate, where he 
became chairman of the Judiciary Committee, when he 
accomplished the abolishment of the old common law sys- 
tem of pleading in Massachusetts, and, marked as a progres- 
sive in other ways, was derided for making the first ten- 
hour-a-day labor speech for a shorter day. 

In 1854 the Know-nothing party in an anti-foreign cam- 
paign swept the State. It was opposed to the last ditch by 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAB 255 

the same sane spirit in which Hoar later opposed the 
A. P. A. 

When absent in Europe in 1868, as he had already against 
his will been pressed into service as a young statesman in 
the State Legislature, so now still against his will, during 
his absence, his name was decided upon as a candidate for 
his district's national Representative at Congress. Back 
from abroad, during the session of the Worcester conven- 
tion that nominated him, he had no desire to be nominated 
and went for a long ride. When, with difficulty, he was 
prevailed upon to accept, he stood out and declared the 
principle that always made him a statesman : "It is by your 
free choice that this nomination has been conferred. It has 
not been begged for or bargained for or intrigued for or 
crawled into." Such was the declaration of statesmanship 
to which, in season and out of season, he kept true up to the 
end when he concluded : "I have never lifted my finger or 
spoken a word to any man to secure or to promote my own 
election to any office." 

When entering the House of Representatives in 1869, 
Grant's administration was at its height and at its depth. 
Henry Wilson and Sumner were there of the old war- 
horses, and Blaine, Garfield, Allison and others of the new. 
Sunset Cox sought to turn down the new member by saying 
after he had made a maiden speech : ' ' Massachusetts does 
not send her Hector to the field ! ' ' 

" It is not necessary when the attack is led by Thersites, ' ' 
was the retort — a rejoinder that won Hoar the field. 

Into the Republican camp of reconstruction, Hoar came 
as a purging finger, not as a blind partisan. He believed 
and was a moving leader in all the positive essentials the 
party of Lincoln was carrying out. He rejoiced in the 
return of the Southern States to the Union, and in the five 



256 MASTER MINDS 

million freedmen and their right to labor and receive wages. 
He led in the treatment of the huge war-debt and the 
exaction of the war-claim from England. 

He did not, however, hide his eyes from the failures of 
reconstruction, South or North. As to the North he 
deplored the failure to vote sums for education in the 
South, for white as well as black. 

He frankly recognized the defects of the Northern man- 
agement of reconstruction, saying: "I myself, although I 
have always maintained, and do now, the equal right of all 
men of whatever color or race to a share in the government 
of the country, felt a thrill of sadness when I saw the 
Legislature of Louisiana in session in the winter of 1873. 
They (the Southerners) had persuaded themselves to believe 
that a contest for political power with a party largely com- 
posed of negroes was a contest for their civilization itself. 
They thought it to be a fight for life with a pack of wolves. 
I incline to think that a large number of the men who got 
political office in the South, when the men who had taken 
part in the Rebellion were still disfranchised, were of a 
character that would not be tolerated in public office in 
the North. In general, it was impossible not to feel a cer- 
tain sympathy with a people who, whatever else had been 
their fault, never were guilty of corruption or meanness or 
the desire to make money out of public office, in the in- 
tolerable loathing which they felt for these strangers who 
had taken possession of the high places." 

With this sympathy, he yet fought fiercely against the 
refusal of the Southern people to secure the negro the bal- 
lot. 

As to his Northern brethren his most outstanding contest 
was against the corruption at the heart of the Republican 
party itself. "When I entered Congress in 1869," he con- 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAR 257 

fessed, "the corridors of the Capitol and the committee- 
rooms were crowded with lobbyists. Adroit and self-seeking 
men were often able, in the multitude of claims which must 
necessarily be disposed of by a rapid examination, to impose 
on committees of the House. ' ' Reviewing the period when 
he had left the House a little later, he said, "My own pub- 
lic life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extend- 
ing little beyond the duration of a single term of Senatorial 
office, but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a 
high court of the United States driven from office by threats 
of impeachment for corruption or mal-administration. " 

Among the chief of corrupt acts was when "the national 
triumph, ' ' the Union Pacific Railroad, from ocean to ocean, 
became by the verdict of three Congressional committees the 
"national shame." The business of this corporation was 
mixed with the Credit Mobilier, in which Peter was 
robbed to pay Paul, and in which the money borrowed to 
construct the road was divided in bonus dividends, men 
paying thirty cents on one dollar. Shares of stock also 
were offered as gifts to secure favorable legislation as to the 
Union Pacific Railroad. All was a source of shame to every 
patriotic Congressman until the issue was met and punish- 
ment meted out — a rectification in which Hoar was a leader. 

But other corruption was rampant. For example, in 
1872, a man, John D. Sanborn, applied for a collection of 
withheld taxes, and from application to a few distillers 
increased his list in 1873 to two thousand and five hun- 
dred and ninety-two, collecting half a million, of 
which he took one half himself! Such was the kind of 
claimants that arose during the administration under Gen- 
eral Grant, whose good-natured trust blinded him to the 
crimes of the corruptionists of which these two are but 
samples. The Tweed ring and New York gang of grafters 
17 



258 MASTERMINDS 

were bad enough. But Hoar's hands were full with the 
Massachusetts centre of evil. He saw that Massachusetts 
indeed furnished the leaders in a school of national corrup- 
tion within the Republican party, which with dismay he 
hastened to expose. This Massachusetts ring came to a 
head in General Benjamin F. Butler, whom Grant had 
relieved from duty in the army in the Civil War only to 
allow him to enter his party counsels in his later Pres- 
idency. 

"The success," declared Mr. Hoar, "of Butler's attempt 
to use and consolidate the political forces of Massachusetts 
would have been the corruption of her youth, the destruc- 
tion of everything valuable in her character and the estab- 
lishment at the mouth of the Charles River of another New 
York with its frauds, Tweed rings and scandals. ' ' 

As early as 1871 the fight took the form of a death 
struggle between Hoar and Butler. At Washington and on 
home ground Hoar contested every inch, first preventing 
Butler from receiving the nomination for Governor at a 
Worcester convention, in which, to guard against a Butler 
disorder, fifty police had to be called in. By 1873 open rup- 
ture resulted, in which Butler attacked Hoar with fiercest 
broadsides, and Hoar replied effectively. Butler, who had 
been the counsel for the corrupt deal of the Union Pacific 
Railroad and Credit Mobilier, was also the father of the 
greenback measure for irredeemable paper money, which 
meant for the immense war-debt, repudiation. The oppo- 
sition led by Hoar and others killed the measure, and Pres- 
ident Grant declared, "Let it be understood that no repudi- 
ator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in 
public place." 

"I am compelled to declare with great reluctance and 
regret," declared Governor John A. Andrew, "that the 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAB 259 

whole course of proceedings under General Butler in this 
Commonwealth seems to have been designed and adopted to 
afford means to persons of bad character to make money 
unauspiciously. ' ' 

Speaking of such abuses from within the Republican 
party, Hoar did not cover it up, but exclaimed: "Who 
writes the history of our time will record them with inex- 
orable pen. ' ' 

In destroying such men who prey upon the nation's 
vitals, Hoar led with others in producing a civil-service law 
to take one hundred thousand offices out of the system of 
public patronage and Senatorial dictation. 

All the time as a Representative and Congressman, and 
later as Senator, Hoar was serving regularly on the various 
committees by which the hard and important work of Con- 
gress is transacted. The Judiciary Committee he especially 
mastered. He was also largely interested in the matter of 
exonerating Oliver 0. Howard from blame in the contro- 
versy as to his conduct of the Freedmen's Bureau. 

He led the Eads bill to victory which secured the open- 
ing of the Mississippi to commerce by the means of jetties. 
Against a large majority of the Republicans who would 
claim it without such a commission, it was his exercise of 
independent judgment that led him to vote with the Demo- 
crats of the House for the Electoral Commission bill of 1877 
to decide upon the Presidential election in the contested 
election between Hayes and Tilden. By this act what might 
have been another civil war was averted from the nation. 
At the close of his Congressional service, Congressman Hoar 
sought to end his public life and refused renomination 
to the House. 

In 1877 the people of the Commonwealth chose him 
United States Senator. He attributed it not to his own 



260 MASTERMINDS 

greatness, but to their desire to rid the State of the misrule 
of Butler. "I'll not get twenty-five votes," he declared 
when first approached. ' ' I can truly say, ' ' he added after- 
wards, "that I was as indifferent to the result as to the 
question whether I should walk on one side of the street or 
the other. I had an infinite longing for my home, my pro- 
fession and my library." — "I never found public employ- 
ment pleasant or congenial." 

Probably no senator was ever a greater worker or, undis- 
turbed by social cares, took his duties more conscientiously. 
Living in the plainest boarding-houses with his wife, on fare 
often that a two-dollar-a-day laborer surpassed, he worked 
harder in continuous labor than any other member of Con- 
gress or senator has ever worked. His fraternals thus 
marked his appearance: 

"In the Senate," said Senator Lodge, "he was a great 
debater, quick in retort, with all the resources of his mind 
always at his command. Although he had no marked gifts 
of presence, voice or delivery, he was none the less a master 
of brilliant and powerful speech. His style was noble and 
dignified, with a touch of the stateliness of the eighteenth 
century, rich in imagery and allusion, full of the apt quota- 
tions which an unerring taste, an iron memory, and the 
widest reading combined to furnish. When he was roused, 
when his imagination was fired, his feelings engaged, or his 
indignation awakened, he was capable of a passionate 
eloquence which touched every chord of emotion and left 
no one who listened to him unmoved. At these moments, 
whether he spoke on the floor of the Senate, in the presence 
of a great popular audience, or in the intimacy of private 
conversation, the words glowed, the sentences marshaled 
themselves in stately sequence, and the idealism which was 
the dominant note of his life was heard sounding clear and 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAR 261 

strong above and beyond all pleas of interest or 
expediency. ' ' 

"One watching him' in the Senate," said another col- 
league, ' ' might think him idly passing away the hour. He 
was watching and listening. He seemed indifferent to Avhat 
was going on. But let an error in argument be made or a 
misstatement of fact asserted, or, to him, false conclusions 
drawn in the course of that debate, and instantly his voice 
would ring throughout the chamber. ' ' 

"I doubt," said a keen neighbor of his Senatorial desk, 
"if he ever really knew an idle waking hour. How often as 
we watched him we saw his lips moving, framing the words 
of his unuttered thought. Those who knew him best could 
not help feeling that even in his moment of apparent relax- 
ation and good fellowship, there was going on within him 
that mysterious thing which we sometimes call 'unconscious 
cerebration;' that his mind was ever at work solving the 
weightiest questions." 

Grounded in American and English history, certain of 
whose epochs he himself treated in monographs and papers, 
Senator Hoar's mind was preeminently fitted to deal with 
questions from the point of view of a patriotic student and 
statesman. 1 

As Senator he thus was an active sharer and close 
observer of the high tasks of statesmanship from Sumner's 
day to the congresses of a later day. To such committees as 
the Committee of Judiciary, which he frequently graced 
and guided ; of Indian Affairs and Agriculture ; of Patents ; 
of the Revision of the Laws ; of the Library Committee ; of 



iHe was at one time President of the American Antiquarian 
Society, whose original manuscripts and data of past epochs as they 
lie in the Worcester society's building are sources of national value. 



262 M ASTER MINDS 

the early Committee on War Claims, involving hundreds 
and hundreds of millions — is to be added the Committee of 
Privileges and Elections, in which he put forward one of his 
most contested bills — the Federal Election Bill in 1890 — for 
the control of the uncorrupted ballot in the South through 
national supervision. The bill was lost by a slight margin. 
It is to be recalled that he was one of the three senators 
against all the others to support President Hayes in his 
institution of civil-service reform. Offered the distin- 
guished post of ambassador to England by President Hayes, 
he declined, as he likewise did when offered the same post 
by President McKinley. He also took great pleasure in 
fathering the Fisheries Treaty, July 10, 1888, by which he 
secured favorable rights for our fishermen off the northern 
coasts of America. 

Were measures unpopular that he deemed right, he never 
flinched or trimmed. 

The River and Harbor Bill of 1882, to grant eighteen mil- 
lion for rendering navigable the Mississippi and other 
streams, he deeply espoused. Against him was the popular 
opinion, Democratic and Republican. Excitement ran high. 
"This measure is right," he concluded with himself. "Is 
my father's son to sneak home to Massachusetts having 
voted against a bill that is clearly righteous and just because 
he is afraid of public sentiment ? " He thereupon risked his 
seat and voted ' ' yes ' ' in the face of a widespread and almost 
universal protest of indignation among press and people. 
"If I had flinched or apologized, I should have been 
destroyed!" was his verdict afterwards, "but I stood to my 
guns." 

The greatest problem in statesmanship on which Hoar 
independently moved on the troubled waters which are yet 
unsettled, is that of the race question. "The relation to 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 263 

each other in a republic of men of different races is a ques- 
tion which has vexed the American people from the begin- 
ning. It is, if I am not mistaken, to vex them still more. 
As surely as the path in which our fathers entered a hun- 
dred years ago led to safety, to strength, to glory, so surely 
will the path in which we now propose to enter bring us to 
shame, to weakness and to peril. 

' ' In dealing with a class of immigrants, I would prescribe 
as strict a rule as the strictest for ascertaining whether the 
immigrant meant in good faith to be an American citizen, 
whether he meant to end his life here, to bring his wife and 
children with him, whether he loved American institutions, 
whether he was fit to understand the political problems with 
which the people had to deal, whether he had individual 
worth or health of body or mind. I would make, if need be, 
ten years or twenty years as the necessary period of resi- 
dence for naturalization. One thing I have never con- 
sented to is that a man shall be kept out of this country, or 
kept in a position of inferiority, while he is in it, because of 
his color, because of his birthplace, or because of his race. ' ' 

Senator Hoar began to utter these principles from which 
he has never moved, as early as the exclusion in California 
of Chinese at the end of the sixties. He charged it a con- 
flict with the doctrines on which our fathers founded the 
republic, with the principles of the constitution of almost 
all the states, including that of California, and with the 
declaration of leading statesmen at the time of the Bur- 
lingame treaty up to the year 1868 and to 1878 at the 
time of the bill against Chinese laborers. His stand thus 
taken in 1880 he also maintained in the bill to exclude 
Chinese laborers. When it expired in twenty years, and 
was renewed with moderation in 1902, he declared: "I feel 
bound to enter a protest. ' ' His stand was one not as to the 



264 MASTERMINDS 

Chinese, but as to a principle which he saw, and propheti- 
cally saw, would involve, and has involved us, in the most 
serious national problem of our time — class distinction as 
to the races. 

"I hold," he has declared, "that every human soul has 
its rights dependent upon its individual personal worth 
and not dependent upon color or race, and that all races, 
all colors, all nationalities contain persons entitled to be 
recognized everywhere they go on the face of the earth as 
the equals of every other man ! The problem of to-day is 
not to convert the heathen from heathenism. It is to 
convert the Christian from heathenism. How our 
race troubles would disappear if the dominant Saxon 
would but obey in his treatment of the heathen races the 
authority of the fundamental laws on which his own insti- 
tutions rest. We easily forgive our own white fellow cit- 
izens for the unutterable and terrible cruelties they have 
committed on men of other races. But if a people just 
coming out of slavery or barbarism commit a hundredth 
part of the same offense, our righteous indignation knows 
no bounds." 

As to the acquisition of Hawaii he said in the Senate 
July 5, 1898 : " If this be the first step in the acquisition of 
dominion over barbarous archipelagoes in distant seas; if 
we are to enter into competition with the great powers of 
Europe in the plundering of China, in the division of 
Africa; if we are to quit our own to stand on foreign 
lands; if our commerce is hereafter to be forced upon 
unwilling peoples at the cannon's mouth; if we are our- 
selves to be governed in part by people to whom the Decla- 
ration of Independence is a stranger, or, worse still, if we 
are to govern subject and vassal states, trampling as we do 
it on our great charter, which records aloft the liberty and 



GEORGE FBI SB IE EOAB 265 

the destiny of individual manhood, — then let us resist this 
thing in the beginning, and let us resist it to death ! ' ' 

Later as to the Philippines he stated directly out and 
out: "I do not agree with those gentlemen who think we 
should wrest the Philippine Islands from Spain and take 
charge of them ourselves. I do not think we should 
acquire Cuba, as the result of the existing war, to be 
annexed to the United States." 

After the treaty of December 18, 1898, by which we 
bought the Philippines from Spain, President McKinley 
thus greeted Senator Hoar: "How are you feeling this 
morning, Mr. Senator?" "Pretty pugnacious, I confess, 
Mr. President." Tears arose in the benignant chief exec- 
utive 's eyes as he said : " I shall always love you whatever 
you do." 

' ' I know, ' n were Hoar 's ringing words, ' ' how feeble is a 
single voice amid this din and tempest, this delirium of 
empire. It may be that the battle for this day is lost, but 
I have an assured faith in the future. I have an assured 
faith in justice and the love of liberty of the American 
people. The stars in their courses fight for freedom. The 
Ruler of the heavens is on that side. If the battle of 
to-day go against it, I appeal to another day, not distant 
and sure to come. I appeal from the clapping of hands 
and the stamping of feet and the brawling and shouting to 
the quiet chamber where the fathers gathered in Philadel- 
phia. I appeal from the empire to the republic. I appeal 
from the millionaire and the boss and the wire-puller and 
the manager to the statesman of the elder time, in whose 
eyes a guinea never glistened, who lived and died poor, and 
who left to his children and his countrymen a good name, 



lUttered somewhat later. 



266 MASTERMINDS 

far better than riches. I appeal from the present, bloated 
with material prosperity, drunk with the lust of empire, to 
another and better age. I appeal from the present to the 
future and to the past. ' ' 

"The treaty was ratified by the Senate February 6, 1899, 
late in the afternoon," recounts Congressman Lovering of 
Massachusetts, ' ' and it so happened that I went over to the 
Senate next morning to ask Senator Hoar to get the appro- 
priation in the River and Harbor Bill increased for 
Plymouth Harbor. A great storm had washed away a mile 
of breakwater, and I said to him that there was danger of 
Plymouth Rock's being washed away. He replied very 
seriously, and almost with tears in his eyes, ' ' Mr. Lovering, 
Plymouth Rock was washed away yesterday afternoon at 
four o'clock." 

Senator Hoar clung to his conviction even during 
the war. "I think that under the head of Mabini and 
Aguinaldo, and their associates, but for our interference a 
republic would have been established at Luzon which would 
have compared with the best of the republican governments 
between the United States and Cape Horn. If we had 
treated them as we did Cuba, we should have been saved 
the public shame of violating not only our own pledges, but 
the rule of conduct which we had declared to be self- 
evident truth in the beginning of our history. ' ' 

Senator Hoar here as throughout was an independent 
within his party and remained there, declaring he could 
accomplish organic results he elsewise, as an independent 
without a party, never could have accomplished. One vote 
in his party would have saved the vote that went for the 
Philippine Treaty, he declared, and one would have held 
back the Spanish Treaty on the part of those disagreeing 
with the party who had left it as independents. 



GEORGE FBISBIE HOAR 267 

Nevertheless lie spared not the rod. "When I think of 
my party, whose glory and whose service to liberty are 
the pride of my life, crushing out this people in their 
effort to establish a good republic, I feel very much as if 
I had learned that my father or some other honored an- 
cestor had been a slaveholder, or had boasted that he had 
introduced a new and better kind of handcuffs or fetters 
to be worn by the slaves during the horrors of the 
middle passage." In the case of the colonies, which 
since have beheld the republic leaning back more 
to his view, Hoar rises to an eloquence equal to 
that of those who championed America in Parliament 
in the Revolution. "I would rather," he exclaimed, 
"have the gratitude of the poor people of the 
Philippine Islands amid their sorrow, and have it true that 
what I may say or do has brought a ray of hope into the 
gloomy covering in which the oppressed people of Asia 
dwell, than to receive a ducal coronet from every monarch 
in Europe or command the applause of listening senates 
or read my history in a nation's eyes." 

"With all this opposition Senator Hoar fronted his party 
just previous to the 4th of March election of 1901! He 
also sharply differed from Senator Lodge, his Massachu- 
setts colleague, as well as with President McKinley, who 
had changed opinion, he believed, under popular pressure. 
Yet when election came he was elected by the Legislature 
without opposition, with all the Republican and with many 
of the Democratic votes! This vindicated his conviction 
that "the great secret of all statesmanship" is "that he 
that withstands the people on fit occasions is commonly the 
man who trusts them most and always in the end the man 
they trust most!" 



268 MASTERMINDS 

"I have throughout my whole political life," he later 
stated, ' ' acted upon my own judgment. I have done what 
I thought for the public interest without much troubling 
myself. It has required no courage for any representative 
of Massachusetts to do what he thought was right. She is 
apt to select, to speak for her, certainly those whom she 
sends to the United States Senate, in which choice the 
whole Commonwealth has a part — men who are, in gen- 
eral, of the same way of thinking and governed by the 
same principles as are the majority of her people. When 
she has chosen them, she expects them to act according 
to their best judgment. She likes independence better than 
obsequiousness. The one thing the people of Massachusetts 
will not forgive in a public servant is that he should act 
against his own honest judgment to please them. So I 
claim no credit that I have always voted and spoken as I 
thought, always without stopping to consider whether pub- 
lic opinion would support me. I have never in my life 
cast a vote or done an act in legislation that I did not at 
that time believe to be right and that I am not now willing 
to avow and to defend and debate with any champion of 
sufficient importance who desires to attack it at any time 
and in my presence. I have throughout my whole political 
life acted upon my own judgment. I have done what I 
thought for the public interest, without much troubling 
myself about public opinion. I account it my great good 
fortune that although I have never flinched from uttering 
whatever I thought and acting according to my own con- 
viction of public duty, as I am approaching fourscore 
years I have, almost without an exception, the good-will 
of my countrymen. In nearly every one of which, I am 
sorry to say, are the numerous instances where I have been 
compelled to act upon my judgment against that of my 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 269 

own countrymen, the people have always come around to 
my way of thinking, and in all of them, I believe, I have 
had on my side the opinion of the great men of the genera- 
tions of the past." 

In choosing the national President in the four great 
national Republican conventions — 1876, 1880, 1884, 
1888 — Senator Hoar moved as a power behind the throne 
of the King of America, — Public Opinion. 

He favored Hayes in 1876 and the exit of Grant. In 
1880 at the landslide for Garfield after his nomination, 
Senator Hoar was presiding officer of the Convention and 
came over to its opinion. 

"Next to the assassination of Lincoln, Garfield's death," 
he asserted, "was the greatest national misfortune caused 
to this country by the loss of a single life." 

In 1884, active for Sherman, he lived to see later the 
defeat of the nominee, Blaine. 

In 1888 Benjamin Harrison was nominated. Hoar 
favored Allison. An international bi-metallist, he boldly 
stated his agreement with Alexander Hamilton, and in 
Europe sought the agreement with European nations, es- 
pecially England and France, to an international bi-metal- 
lic system. He opposed Mr. Bryan's free coinage of 
silver by one nation alone as repudiation. He also 
opposed Mr. Bryan on the Philippine Treaty, believing 
that had the great Commoner not favored it, it would not 
have been enacted. 1 

By Senator Hoar 's statesmanship came ' ' the Presidential 
Succession," the constitutional change that makes the 



iln 1908 Mr. Bryan stated privately in the presence of the author 
that the urging of that treaty he regarded as the greatest act of 
statesmanship in his life. 



270 MASTERMINDS 

Presidential office succeed in case of the Chief Executive's 
death or removal, to the Vice-president and the Cabinet 
members, beginning with the Secretary of State. 

From the Free-soil movement to the Colonial question, 
not as a politician trimming his sails to the populace, but 
as a statesman acting up to his independent judgment, 
Senator Hoar, in a way unsurpassed by any other modern 
statesman, came not to others' views, but to his own; 
not to majorities, but to himself; not to the dictation of 
others' minds, whether of Presidents or Senates or the 
crowds at the hustings, but he came under God to the 
dictation of his own mind. 

AS A RIPENED SOUL 

But in the third place he came to himself also as a 
ripened soul. He mellowed toward opponents, and more 
and more saw the good on the other side as well as the 
evil on his own. Preeminently was this true of the 
Southern Democrats. 

"They are a noble race," he insisted. "We may well 
pattern from them on some of the great virtues which 
make up their strength as they make the glory of the 
free states. Their love of home, their chivalrous respect 
for woman, their courage, their delicate sense of humor, 
their constancy, which can abide by an opinion or a pur- 
pose or an interest of their states, through adversity and 
through prosperity, through the years and through the 
generations, are things by which the people of the North 
may take a lesson. And there is another thing — covet- 
ousness, corruption, the low temptation of money, have 
not yet found any place in our Southern politics. 

We cannot afford to live, and do not wish to live in a 
state of estrangement from a people who possess these 



GEORGE F EI SB IE HOAR 271 

qualities. They are our kindred, bone of our bone, 
flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood, and whatever may 
be the temporary error of any Southern states, I for 
one, if I have a right to speak for Massachusetts, say to 
her: 'Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from 
following after thee, for where thou goest I will go, and 
where thou stayest I will stay also, and thy people shall 
be my people, and thy God, my God.' " 

As to caste and class bitterly arraigned as an aristo- 
crat, he used in reply his famous "fish-ball letter," writ- 
ten to the editor of the Pittsburg Post in August, 1890 : — 

Washington, D. C, August 10, 1890. 
To the Editor of the Pittsburg Post. 

My dear Man: 

What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head 
of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? 

I never said the thing you attribute to me in any interview, 
caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or land. 
My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his days, but 
he was a very generous and liberal man and never put much 
value in money. My share of his estate was ten thousand five 
hundred dollars. All the revenue-producing property I have in 
the world, or ever had, yields a little less than eighteen hundred 
dollars a year; eight hundred dollars of that is from a life 
estate, and the other thousand comes from a corporation which 
has only paid dividends for the last two or three years, and 
which, I am afraid, will pay no dividend or much smaller ones 
after two or three years to come. With that exception the 
house where I live, with its contents, with about four acres of 
land, constitutes my whole worldly possession, except one or two 
vacant lots which would not bring me five thousand dollars, all told. 
I could not sell them for enough to pay my debts. I have been in 
my day an extravagant collector of books, and have a library which 
you would like to see, and which I should like to show you. Now 
as to office-holding and working, I think there are few men on 
this continent who have put so much hard work into life as I 



272 MASTER MINDS 

have. I went one winter to the Massachusetts House of Repre- 
sentatives, when I was twenty-five years old, and one winter to 
the Massachusetts Senate, when I was thirty years old. The pay 
was two dollars a day at that time. I was nominated, much to 
my surprise, and on both occasions declined a renomination. I 
afterward twice refused a nomination for mayor of my city, have 
twice refused a seat on the Supreme Bench of Massachusetts, and 
refused for years to go to Congress when the opportunity was in 
my power. I was at last broken down with overwork and went 
to Europe for my health. During my absence the arrangements 
were made for my nomination to Congress, from which when I 
got home I could not well escape. The result is I have been here 
twenty years as Eepresentative and Senator, the whole time 
getting a little poorer year by year. If you think I have not 
made a good one, you have my full authority for saying anywhere 
that I entirely agree with you. During all this time I have never 
been able to hire a house in Washington. My wife and I have 
experienced the varying fortunes of Washington boarding-houses, 
sometimes very comfortable, and a good deal of the time living 
in a fashion to which no laborer earning two dollars a day 
would subject his household. Your terrapin is all in my eye, very 
little in my mouth. The chief carnal luxury of my life is in 
breakfasting every Sunday morning with an Orthodox friend, a 
lady who has a real gift of making fish-balls and coffee. You 
unfortunate and benighted Pennsylvanians can never know the 
exquisite flavor of the codfish salted, made into balls and eaten 
Sunday morning by a person whose theology is Orthodox, and 
who believes in all the five points of Calvinism. I myself am 
but an unworthy heretic, but I am of Puritan stock, of the recent 
generation, and there is vouchsafed to me also my share of that 
ecstasy and a dim glimpse of that beatific vision. Be assured, 
my benighted Pennsylvania friend, that in that day when the week 
begins, all the terrapin of Philadelphia and Baltimore and all 
the soft-shelled crabs of the Atlantic shore might pull at my 
trousers-legs and thrust themselves on my notice in vain. 

Yours faithfully, 

George F. Hoar. 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 273 



A LOVER OF THE HOME 

With the advancement of years Senator Hoar took 
boyish glee in democratic simplicity and, quite the oppo- 
site of affecting the patrician, threw off every artifice 
of dignity. 

"I have never got over being a boy," he exclaimed. 
"It does not seem likely I ever shall. I have today, 
at the age of threescore and sixteen, less sense of my 
own dignity than I had when I walked for the first time 
into the college chapel at Harvard, clad, as the statute 
required, in a black or a black mixed coat, with buttons 
of the same color, and the admiring world, with its eyes 
on the venerable freshman, seemed to me to be saying 
to itself: "Ecce caudam' — 'Behold the tail.' " 

As if championing oppressed peoples was not enough, 
in 1897, as a lover of the birds, he championed our 
feathered race of nature's songsters, and in the name of 
the birds themselves, by a petition in the form of a pictoric 
pastoral he had offered in the Legislature, he carried an 
enactment for their preservation. 

This petition, unsigned except by the pictures and 
names underneath, of all Massachusetts' birds, hangs in 
the hall of his home. 

In this home as well as in his home town he counted his 
friends his choicest treasures, and the meeting with a 
friend was to him the bright spot of a day. 

Opening out of the hall is the library, running the full 
breadth of the house, with its windows commanding a 
stately, terraced acreage of oaks and maples. But within, 
breaks upon the eye the real court circle of the Senator's 
private life. It looks down from three sides of the impos- 
ing chamber from thousands of books whose authors, of all 
18 



274 MASTERMINDS 

ages and times, were the companions of the statesman's 
mind, and their words the stimulus of his soul. Behind 
the empty chair at the desk, as though an ever present 
shepherd and pastor, stands a massive bust of Edward 
Everett Hale, majestically rugged and heroically moulded. 
In addition to this splendid head of Hale are busts of 
Roger Sherman, of Emerson, and of Samuel Hoar, Senator 
Hoar's father. At the other end is a regal painting of 
Webster, brought from the Capitol. 

Over the fireplace and on either side are three mural 
mottoes, one in Greek, one in Latin, one in English. The 
English motto is from George Herbert, and reads: 

"Man is no Star, But a Quick Coal of Mortal Fire. 
Who blows it not nor doth control a Faint Desire 
Lets His Own Ashes Choke His Soul. ' ' 

Before the Latin motto the .Senator would heartfully 
turn to his friends, and paraphrase it thus : 

"Rest I at Home — . 

Why Seek I more; 

Here's Comfort, Books and Mrs. Hoar." 

All this delicately betrays Senator Hoar's fidelity to 
home and to a helpmeet the love-light of whose face is so 
expressive in the picture with President Roosevelt, the Sen- 
ator and the children. 

The statesman's love of children is nowhere better 
shown than where he and his wife stand on the portico 
of the house, clasping hands with the country's Chief 
Executive, their grand-daughters and two little Syrian 
immigrants between them. 1 Unjustly detained at immi- 



iThe rare photograph of the group has been kindly lent by the 
artist, Schervee, of Worcester. 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAB 275 

gration headquarters and in danger of deportation, Senator 
Hoar's great heart responded to their cry, interfered in 
their behalf, and through the President, with whom he 
stands, broke down the cruel bar that separated them 
from their new home. 

On the mantel of the fireplace a model of Lincoln's hand 
grasps a rod, typifying that for which he existed — the 
breaking of the rod of the oppressor. 

On to the left of the library hangs on massive hinges 
a carven black oak door removed from the ancient house 
of Charles Hoare, Gloucester, England, who lived there in 
1580. Just by this, some nine by three feet, is the massive 
chest made of timbers from the same old English house. 
It is also of black oak, and carven with the initials of its 
owner, Richard Hoare of Gloucester. 

Close by is a heavily carven black oak table of Charles 
the Second, dating to the time of his escape after the 
siege of Worcester, England. At its side is a black oak 
carven chair from a pew in Shakespeare's church. 
"Shakespeare's hands not infrequently touched the wood 
of this piece," was the Senator's accustomed exclamation. 
"What a time the ghosts of the King and the dramatist 
must have haunting these relics," he more than once laugh- 
ingly remarked. 

Since the death of the late lamented Rockwood Hoar, 
a daughter having died in earlier years, Miss Mary Hoar is 
the last of Senator Hoar's immediate children to survive. 

The mellowness of soul that overlooked class dis- 
tinctions of race or religion \ showed itself as to his 
attitude to the Irish Catholic people. His intense antag- 
onism was evoked against the A. P. A. movement against 
the Catholics, especially as it had its home in the Republi- 
can party. 



276 MASTERMINDS 

"This nation is a composite. It is made up of many 
streams, of the twisting and winding of many bands. 
The greatest hope and destiny of our land is expressed 
in the phrase of our motto, 'E Pluribus Unum' — 'one of 
many,' one of many states, one nation; of many races, 
one people ; of many creeds, one faith ; of many bended 
knees, one family of God." 

Thus he sang the death-knell of the A. P. A., believing 
that it would break up the Republican party and en- 
gender a racial and religious strife. 

"We are confronted," he said, "with a public danger 
which comes from the attempt to rouse the old feelings 
of the dark ages, and which ought to have ended with 
them, between men who have different forms of faith. 
It is an attempt to recall on one side the cruelties of the 
Catholic church and to frighten old women of both sexes ; 
and, on the other side, to bind the men of the Catholic church 
together for political action. Both these attempts will fail. ' ' 

He hit hard at its author by saying, "You want to go 
into a cellar to declare your principles. You want to 
join an army whose members are ashamed to confess they 
belong to it. . . You think the way to make good citizens 
and good men of them and to attract them to Protestant- 
ism is to exclude them, their sons and daughters from all 
public employments, and to go yourself into a dark cellar 
and curse them through the gratings of the windows." 

"I think the time has come to throw down the walls 
between Christians and not to build new ones. I think 
the time has come to inculcate humane and good will be- 
tween all American citizens, especially between all citi- 
zens of the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 

At another time, at the death of McKinley, showing his 
rare spirit of tolerance towards both of these classes 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 277 

other than his own section and race and religion, he 
concluded in a burst of hope, unsurpassed in political and 
racial prophecy: "What hope and confidence in the 
future for a people, when all men and women of all par- 
ties and nations, of all faiths and creeds, of all classes 
and conditions are ready to respond as ours have re- 
sponded to this emotion of a mighty love. ■ 

"You and I are men of the North. Most of us are 
Protestants in religion. We are men of native birth. 
Yet if every Republican were today to fall in his place 
as William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen 
of the other party, in spite of what we deem their errors, 
would take the republic and bear on the flag to liberty 
and glory. I believe that if every Protestant were to 
be stricken down by a lightning-stroke, their brethren 
of the Catholic faith would still carry on the republic 
in the spirit of a true and liberal freedom. I believe 
that if every man of native birth within our borders 
were to die this day, the men of foreign birth, who have 
come here to seek homes and liberty under the shadow 
of the republic, would carry it on in God's appointed 
way. I believe if every man of the North were to die, 
the new and christened South, with the virtues it has 
cherished from the beginning, of love of home and love 
of State, and love of freedom, with its courage and its 
constancy, would take the country and bear it on to 
the achievement of its lofty destiny. The anarchist must 
slay seventy-five million Americans before he can slay 
the republic." 

As to religion, "no five points, no Athanasian creed, 
no thirty-nine articles," he declared, "separate the men 
and women of our way of thinking from humanity or 
from divinity." 



278 MASTERMINDS 

He claimed he was one of those to whom " Judea's news 
is still glad tidings," who believed "that one day Jesus 
Christ came to this earth leaving a divine message and 
giving a divine example." 

He said he chose to live and die in the faith that ac- 
tuated one of his own relatives, Sherman Hoar, who, from 
the fever-haunted hospital and the tropical swamp, and the 
evening dews and damps of the Spanish War, when the 
Lord said : ' ' Where is the messenger that will take his life 
in his hands, that I may send him to carry health to my 
stricken soldiers and sailors? Whom shall I send?" an- 
swered, "Here am I; send me!" 

"The difference between Christian sects, like the dif- 
ference between individual Christians, is not so much the 
matter of belief or disbelief of portions of the doctrine 
of the Scripture as in the matter of emphasis." 1 

"There are two great texts in the Scriptures in whose 
sublime phrases are contained the germs of all religions, 
whether natural or revealed. They lay hold on two 
eternities. One relates to the Deity in His solitude — 
'Before Abraham was, I am.' The other is for the 
future. It sums up the whole duty and the whole destiny 
of man. 'And now abideth Faith, Hope and Charity, 
these three.' Hope is placed as the central figure. With 
Hope, as we have defined it — namely, the confident ex- 
pectation of the final triumph of righteousness — we are 
left but a little lower than the angels; without it we are 
a kind of vermin." 

"I believe the lesson which is impressed on me daily, 
and more deeply as I grow old, is the lesson — Good Will 



lAlmost exactly the wise word of President Taft in a late pro- 
nouncement on religion. 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAB 279 

and Good Hope. ... I believe that in spite of so many- 
errors and wrongs and even crimes, my countrymen of all 
climes desire what is good, and not what is evil." 

Sick unto death the last few months of the summer of 
1904, to solace himself for companionship of soul with 
the lives of other great men. Senator Hoar read Morley's 
life of Gladstone. He also reflected in these days on the 
beautiful life of his wife, whose departure, he said, took 
from him the light and pleasure of living. The deep reli- 
giousness of his nature was shown by the consolation he 
took in Watts' hymn, "Our God, our Help in Ages Past," 
brought to him by his old pastor, Rev. Calvin Stebbins 
of Framingham, who came at his summons. "I have sent 
for you, and I want you should read to me Watts' para- 
phrase of the XCth Psalm, ' ' said the Senator, ' ' and I want 
you should read the whole of it; there are nine verses. It 
begins not '0 God,' but 'Our God, our Help in Ages 
Past' " 

' ' I recollect very clearly the emphasis he put upon ' Our 
God, our Help, ' ' ' recalls Mr. Stebbins. ' ' His voice, which 
up to that time had been weak and husky, was as clear 
as ever. ' ' This was the mood in which the dying statesman 
followed, stanza after stanza, till the lines: "Our shelter 
from the stormy blast, and our eternal home." 

In this faith Senator Hoar died at his home in Wor- 
cester, Sept. 30th, 1904, and was buried in Concord, the 
home of his Puritan ancestors. And fitly was he buried 
here. For Senator Hoar clung more deeply than any 
statesman to-day to the positive essentials of the Pilgrim. 
He it was who devoted years to bringing back 
the Bradford manuscript — the diary of Bradford, the 
Governor of the Pilgrim Colony — which was carried to 
England in the Revolution from the Old South Church, 



280 MASTER MINDS 

Boston, where the precious document was stored from 
early days. Senator Hoar long sought it in its resting- 
place at Fulham, England. For he declared that it 
seemed to him the most precious manuscript on earth, unless 
we could recover one of the four gospels as it came in the 
beginning from the pen of the Evangelist. 

"My lord," he said to Bishop Temple, "I think this 
book ought to go back to Massachusetts." 

"I did not know that you cared anything about it," 
answered the Bishop, surprised. 

"Why, if there were in existence in England a history 
of King Alfred's reign for thirty years, written by his 
own hand, it would not be more precious in the eyes of 
Englishmen than this manuscript is to us," he answered. 

The question, taken to the Archbishop and Queen Vic- 
toria, was graciously settled, and the precious manuscript 
delivered to our country, where it reposes in the State Li- 
brary at the State House at Boston, open to all at the 
page where is written the compact in the Mayflower — 
the first written constitution of freemen. It is seen 
through the glass above, spotted as it is with the tears of 
children and strong men. 

Fittingly, we say, by the home of his ancestors of 
Puritan stock lie George Frisbie Hoar's mortal remains 
in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord. Besides America's 
first men and women of letters there are buried at Concord 
Revolutionary soldiers, among them his father's great kin, 
who on both sides of the Hoar family sprang to their 
country's birthrights in the first strife at the Bridge. One 
of these, without a gun, rushed in with a cane till he 
seized the musket of one of the two fallen Englishmen. 
Many of them George Frisbie Hoar knew and saw and 
heard as a boy. 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAB 281 

He once described them as he sawthem alive : — ' ' Scattered 
about the church were the good grey heads of many 
survivors of the Revolution, the men who had been at 
the Bridge on the 19th of April, and who made the first 
armed resistance to the British power. They were 
very striking and venerable figures with their queues 
and knee-breeches, and shoes with shining buckles. 
They had heard John Buttrick's order to fire 
which marked the moment when our country was born. 
The order was given to the British subjects. It was 
obeyed by American citizens. Among them was old 
master Blood who saw the balls strike the water when 
the British fired the first volley." 

There in Sleepy Hollow lies his mother, daughter of 
Roger Sherman of Connecticut, signer of the Declaration 
of Independence and of the Constitution, and approved 
as one of the three greatest minds among the Continental 
fathers. 

The mother's best epitaph is in these words of the 
son, in whom indeed, when he came to himself, as a 
student of truth, as a statesman and as a ripened soul, his 
mother's character was in more than one way repro- 
duced: "My mother was the most perfect democrat, in 
the best sense of the word, that I ever knew. It was a 
democracy which was the logical result of the doctrines 
of the Old Testament and the New. It recognized the 
dignity of the individual soul, without regard to the acci- 
dent of birth or wealth or color of the skin. If she were in 
the company of a queen, it would never have occurred to 
her that they did not meet as equals, and if the queen 
were a woman of sense and knew her, it would never 
occur to the queen. The poorest people in the town, the 
paupers in the poor-house, thought of her as a personal 



282 MASTER MINDS 

friend to whom they could turn for sympathy and 
help." 

As lasting as any memorial of Senator Hoar will be 
Asnebumskit, one of the great green hills which are Wor- 
cester's peculiar glory, and which Senator Hoar loved 
enough to buy and leave to posterity. 

In Worcester a charming reminiscence hangs about 
the sloping heights of Asnebumskit, whose great 
hill-sides, which the Senator has bequeathed in trust 
to his two grandchildren, careen toward the city. 
The statesman, whose independent, fearless soul was itself 
preeminently eagle-like and Alpine, by accident became 
the host of a pair of bald eagles and an eaglet, bidding the 
people of the countryside to let them fly to and fro, free 
from harm. His own words in a heart-to-heart talk to the 
people in the Worcester Gazette thus verify the truth of the 
reminiscence and catch George Frisbie Hoar's heart- tones 
as well as the classic idealism of his nature : 

"A Bald Eagle at Asnebumskit?" — "There were a pair 
in the hill last year with an eaglet (that got out of the 
nest a little too soon) whom they were feeding and guard- 
ing with that marvelous love for offspring which so large- 
ly pervades all animal nature and is the most complete 
and tender manifestation on earth of God's love for His 
children. If there be anybody anywhere who cares for 
me, I beg that the eagle may be let alone. I have been 
at a good deal of cost and a good deal of trouble to pre- 
serve this beautiful and lovely spot and make it accep- 
table to people who cannot afford distant journeys. You 
can see the blue summits of many an eagle's home in the 
far horizon when you stand on Asnebumskit. I shall 
deem myself well repaid if you will not disturb our noble 
guest. Certainly no Worcester man or boy would lie in 



GEORGE FBI SB IE HOAR 283 

wait to do a wrong to the American eagle. He came on 
the 19th of April, our country's birthday, the guest of 
Worcester County. Leave him to be the ornament and 
glory of the sky. ' ' 

Other memorials his proud city of "Worcester has 
carved in marble and enduringly erected in bronze and 
granite. Notable among them is his own inscription deeply 
carven by the metropolis across the front of the stately 
Court House: "Obedience to Law is Liberty." The bronze 
statue at the northwest corner of City Hall, on whose site 
met the first Free-soil party, is also equally impressive, 
especially when beheld with these words on the brass 
tablet below: "I believe in God, the Living God, in the 
American People, a free and brave people, who do not bow 
the neck or bend the knee to any other, and who desire no 
other to bow the neck or bend the knee to them. I be- 
lieve that Liberty, Good Government, Free Institutions, 
cannot be given by any one people to any other, but must 
be wrought out for each by itself, slowly, painfully, in the 
process of years or centuries, as the oak adds ring to ring. 
I believe that whatever clouds may darken the horizon, the 
world is growing better, that to-day is better than yester- 
day, and to-morrow will be better than to-day. ' ' 




Luther Burbank 
Discoverer of ;i New Plant World 



LUTHER BURBANK 

DISCOVERER OP A NEW PLANT-WORLD 

THE "forty-niners" who went to California in the 
gold-fever of fifty years ago opened to the world 
great wealth. But no forty-niner, nor all the forty- 
niners and gold-seekers together, will have opened to the 
world wealth equal to that to be mined in the veins of a 
plant and the capsules of a flower by such discoveries as 
those of a man whose only claim to being a "forty-niner" 
is that he crossed the golden gate of birth in the Massachu- 
setts town of Lancaster the 7th of March, 1849. 

The name of this discoverer of a new plant-creation is, 
as all the world knows, Luther Burbank. He is a gold- 
hunter whose fever is to discover treasures hid not in 
quartz or bullion, but in the plant-cell and the floral calyx. 
In solid wealth, the sum total of such riches as these will 
in due time, as the years go on, as they multiply, bury out 
of sight that of the gold-mines of America. 1 

"I know I shall be regarded as a crazy man when I tell 
you that the work being done by this one man will pro- 
duce more wealth than the entire endowment of the 
Carnegie Institution, ' ' declared President "Woodward of the 
Institution. "But I accept this risk and make the state- 
ment. ' ' 



iThat this is not a chimera is seen by the fact that the total value 
of our farm products in 1908 was four times the value of all the 
mines. 



286 MASTER MINDS 

The inestimable value that will in due time accrue to 
humanity, wherever Burbank's divining-rod is to touch, 
is beyond computation. To make this prediction assume 
the bounds of reason, we need only consider the one 
billion seven million acres of desert-land lying waste on 
the globe, and over against this the new cactus he has 
created to vegetate these wastes, capable of bearing six 
hundred to one thousand pounds to a plant, its pulpy 
leaves edible for cattle and its three and a half-inch crim- 
son fruit palatable for man. Were the population of the 
world one-third greater, it is his familiar prophecy that 
because of this improved plant alone, food would exist 
for all, both man and beast. 

Furthermore, we recall that, even by causing one more 

grain in each ear, the annual product in the United States 

alone would be, of corn 5,200,000 bushels more, 

of wheat 15,000,000 bushels more, 

of oats 20,000,000 bushels more, 

of barley 1,000,000 bushels more. 

By the addition of one tuber to a potato-vine, the potato- 
crop will be increased twenty-one million bushels a year. 
Since his discovery of it years ago, the first product of his 
creation, the Burbank potato, has, on such eminent author- 
ity as Hugo De Vries and members of the United States 
Department of Agriculture, added to the nation wealth 
equal to about twenty million dollars. If stretched in a 
line touching each other, the potatoes would measure the 
distance of four and one-half times to the moon and back. 

burbank's great purpose 

Could Burbank live on, and by some patent-right possess 
these added values, he would be, indeed, a plutocrat. But 
such is not his passion — a passion altogether too vast to be 



LUTHER BUBBANK 287 

bounded by gold and silver — a passion which refuses to 
gain the whole world and lose his own soul. 

"The plant-breeder will have no time," he has declared, 
"to make money." "No man ever did a great work for 
hire!" 

His is an ideal identical with that of the elder Agas- 
siz, who declared, when pressed to turn his researches into 
wealth, "I have no time to make money." 

Herein lies the distinctive genius, the God-given original- 
ity, the prophetic greatness of the man. Herein lies his 
master mind. Herein, greater than in all his marvelous 
creations, is a personality that, distinct from that of a 
skilled market-gardener or a gold-gilded money-seeker, is in 
America just at this time unique and rare. 

As soon as any such genius is filled with the holy spirit 
of a great ambition and comes to the consciousness of a 
God-smitten purpose, he is always at once driven into the 
wilderness to be tempted. The experience of the great 
Exemplar and Archetype is universally true. The world, 
the flesh or the devil always conspires to buy off and 
wrench such a genius from his task to better the world. 

Luther Burbank was no stranger to this experience. It 
confronted him between school-terms at the age of sixteen. 
This test first faced him when he was sent for summer work 
to the noise and dirt of a machine-shop in "Worcester, in the 
Ames Plow Company, of which Luther Ross, his uncle, was 
superintendent. 

Though not at home in the maddening crowd and the 
mechanical world, his constructive genius was not yet so 
caged, "cribbed, cabined and confined" that even here it 
could be prevented from breaking out into creative power. 
Such creative power as a fact had been existent and notice- 
able long years before, as, for instance, when, an old dis- 



288 MASTER MINDS 

jointed mower having to be put together, before the puzzled 
mechanics on his father's farm, mere boy that he was, he 
picked the right piece that was missing and adjusted it 
at once. 

"How'd you know?" he was asked. "Because you 
couldn't put it anywhere else," he answered. 

This innate inventive power to construct and discover, 
even in things mechanical, led him now in the plow- 
factory to hit upon a labor-saving machine that would save 
the work of a half dozen men. 

To keep such a brain in the factory's service the Bur- 
bank boy's pay was multiplied by twenty-five. The ad- 
vance in pay was due, he tells us to-day, primarily to this 
labor-saving process of his own invention, which, from the 
fact that he was allowed to work by the piece, earned for 
him by its rapid turning out of pieces from $10 to $16 a 
day. But in the face of this increase, which was enough to 
carry any boy off his feet, he refused to remain, and clung 
to his one ruling passion to be true to the plant-world's 
call. 

The switch of every metallic side-track which contin- 
ually the world kept swinging open, he was repeatedly 
to close. He closed the switch not because for many 
another it might not be just the place for their genius, but 
because it would deflect him from the main line of his mas- 
ter motive. To this he became wedded, as he has since 
remained, and will remain, "for better, for worse; for 
richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health, till death 
'them' do part." 

A great voice has said that boldness has genius, and 
genius boldness, and that — 

"Indecision brings its own delays; 
The days are lost lamenting over days. 



LUTHER BUBBANK 289 

Are you in earnest? Seize the very minute; 
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. 
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. 
Truly engage, and then the mind grows heated; 
Begin it, and the work will be completed." 

Burbank had the boldness of genius to begin, and we 
turn aside to note his beginning. 

As we watch this first step that linked Burbank to his 
destiny, chained him to his career and commissioned him to 
his prophetic call to the plant-world, we stop to recall that 
on the human side, in this boy, the thirteenth child of his 
father, flowed the Scotch blood of his mother and the 
English blood of his father, and that the scene of his first 
great success along this line of his one and mighty purpose 
to be a plant-creator, opens upon a spot in his family's 
market-garden in Lunenburg, out in the farm-lands some 
miles from his birthplace. His mother's father, before the 
eyes of the staring lad, had in such a place raised from 
seed, grapes and rhubarbs, producing new and improved 
varieties. To Luther it was a spot to be approached, not 
with scorn, as a place to pull weeds, but as a shrine in 
which to discern mysteries. It is recorded that once the 
first great Luther fell down upon his knees in a field of 
growing wheat and thanked God for the miracle. To this 
Luther, vegetation and growth meant equally a miracle. 

There happened to be in that garden on a single Early 
Rose potato-plant — an unheard-of thing for that variety — 
a seed-ball. Luther Burbank detected it, and detected, too, 
that it was an unusual growth. Would not the seedling 
plants grown from it show still further differences? The 
New England potatoes then were poor. Could not this 
offer a departure whence to change their degeneracy 1 And 

19 



290 MASTERMINDS 

by planting this seed, could he not improve the stock ? It 
took no time to leap to this conclusion. Young Burbank 
seized upon it without delay. It proved to be the psycho- 
logical moment of his life. 

On that day he touched the secret nature held out to 
him to grasp — the secret of a new plant-world. But soon 
after this something, perhaps a stray dog, knocked off the 
seed-ball. He at once noticed the mishap and searched dil- 
igently till with its twenty-three tiny seeds, he found the 
ball. Carefully treasuring it, he waited, and the next 
season planted the seeds. The result was the new and 
splendid product, the Burbank potato. 

This potato, which was to bring in value twenty-one mil- 
lion dollars to the United States alone, he sold for but one 
hundred and fifty dollars. 1 It was with this money and 
ten of the new potatoes that he resolved to set out for Cali- 
fornia, to conquer the kingdom of plants. 

Refusing for the rest of his life to make money of his 
venture, be the richest man in Lunenburg, and as a horti- 
culturist batten on the income of a recreated tuber, was 
counter to the advice of the crowd. But their purpose 
extended no further than the periphery of a silver dollar. 
His was girdled only by the boundless reach of the plant- 
zone. 

Even much earlier than this came an indication of his 
life-plan. His older sister tenderly recalls to us his infant 
passion for wild plants and flowers. She portrayed the 



iMany stories surround this as other major and minor events of 
Burbank 's life. Even at his native place I have been assured it was 
five hundred dollars the potatoes sold for. But this, as many other 
overdrawn little statements, Mr. Burbank and his sister have taken 
the pains to correct within this article. 



LUTHER B URBANE 291 

effect they had upon his baby mind. They were his pets, 
and small the tree or lichen or weed that escaped him. 
Instead of dolls, he loved the wilding and the daisy. Where 
one child would weep at the disfigurement of a wax doll, 
he cried as if his heart would break at the dismemberment 
of a flower. Holding up the prickly cactus, which was to 
become his masterpiece of re-creation, his sister distinctly 
recalls him toddling about, clasping it in his arms, not as a 
foe, but as a pet. 

"Mr. Burbank, these are all reflexes from you. Do you 
not sometimes feel as if you were exerting a psychic force 
upon these plants, that in some way not yet expressible in 
scientific terms they are following the suggestions of your 
imagination?" To this question put to him later in life, 
we do not wonder that with such inborn instincts he replied, 
"Yes, why not?" 1 

FROM MASSACHUSETTS TO CALIFORNIA 

In 1875 young Burbank fulfilled his resolution to set out 
for California. We have seen in Massachusetts at how 
great a price he bought the freedom by which his genius 
might follow its bent. He was on the Pacific coast to pay a 



iThe Press has recently reported that Francis Darwin, son of the 
elder Darwin, speaking on the "Consciousness of Plants" 
before the British Association at Dublin, declared in his address 
as its President that plants must be classed as animals. He 
declared that he gladly takes his place before the world as the 
champion of the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters, 
the lost cause with reference to plants as well as animals. Darwin 
advanced proof to show that plants have memory, can develop habits, 
and will conduct themselves differently at times, according to their 
moods. He also claimed that there is a system in plants that corre- 
sponds to the nervous framework of animals and that it acts in 
similar way on their constitutions and tempers. From that he argued 



292 MASTERMINDS 

greater price. Hunger, loneliness, a deadly fever — all 
these combined between him and his purpose. To the core 
of his being they were to assault his will-power. For when 
he reached the Pacific slope he found little work and his 
small savings from the sale of his new potato were about 
gone. 

Unable to pay for proper food and shelter, too proud to 
let his need be known, he suffered severe physical as well as 
mental hardships, from which his sensitive, refined nature 
recoiled. 

Once the chance to better his condition he thought he saw 
in shingling a shed; but next day, when he had spent all 
his savings in a hatchet, it was, as he confirms for us 
to-day, but to find the job taken by a still lower bidder. 
He was not wanted ! 

Nearer to his heart was a laborer's heavy work in a 
greenhouse, where it was his fate to have to sleep in a 
damp room in a loft over the steaming hothouse. But 
human stamina broke under the strain, and Luther Bur- 
bank lay deathly sick of a dangerous fever. 

A woman offered him daily a pint of milk from her cow. 
He refused to take it. He had not a cent to pay her ! He 
feared, he confessed, he "might never be able." Her 
insistence, however, forced the nourishment upon him. 
This good woman saved Luther Burbank to the world. 



that plants are quite as capable of telegraphing their feelings from 
one part of their organisms to another as are animals, and that they 
are sensitive to impressions and show likes and dislikes readily. To 
some persons they respond with vigorous growth and brilliant blos- 
soms, and to others they return nothing but the most commonplace or 
poor specimens of growth and development. The younger Darwin 
remarks, "We must believe that in plants there exists a faint copy 
of what we call consciousness in ourselves." 



LUTHER B URBANE 293 

All these things were happening to one who was no slum 
beggar, but the son of proud New Englanders — rela- 
tives who had been the companions of Agassiz and Emer- 
son. For such was the intellectual aristocracy with whose 
books he himself was steeped and whose original inspiration 
he claims he is now in many ways outworking and express- 
ing. It is by the force of such clear thought and pure pur- 
pose that we behold him pressing through the stubborn 
crust of circumstance. 

He was to make the countryside where he was, famous. 
But the people knew it not, and at first, as is the case with 
every seer, the plant-prophet was "without honor in his 
own country and in his own home. ' ' 

America needed and still needs the personality of Bur- 
bank — a personality in which quality dominates quantity, 
in whom mind permeates materialism, and in whom is not 
the threatened American blight of — 

The flower without the fragrance, 

The fruit without the taste, 
The bigness without the beauty, 

The wealth that spells but waste. 

By 1876 the result of his struggles in California left him 
enough to start a small nursery at Santa Rosa, and this 
same year he was joined by his mother and sister from New 
England. 

To an outward eye his vocation was to be that of a nur- 
seryman and collector of wild California seeds for eastern 
and European dealers. In a laughing world, this hermit 
figure, refusing to be carried away by the coarser quanti- 
tative genius of materialism, sped silently on his way, 
searching through the days for specimens of the plant he 
sought, and burning till late at night the student's lamp. 



294 MASTER MINDS 

Far from understood, he "knew himself," and "a purpose 
is a good companion." He was also, to put it in his own 
words, "in a paradise of plants;" in what he called in a 
letter home, "the chosen spot of all the earth," enough "to 
set a botanist wild!" What, therefore, did he care? In 
but a few years he was to change the scorner's and word- 
ing's mind, and make scores of thousands from all the 
world pass by his neighbors' obscure estates and seek him, 
as one of the seers of his time and day. 1 

Respectability itself, which because of its exclusiveness is 
too often dull, did not understand him, and sometimes 
even in highest places it frowned upon his daring 
attempts to produce new species. A callow clergyman 
denounced him in his experiments with plants as trying to 
change the good laws of God. He even invited Burbank 
to the church, to hear unsuspectingly his own denunciation. 

To be befriended was therefore the exception. It was a 
pleasant surprise for him once to hear a man who was an 
old settler thereabouts thus address him : ' ' Say, young fel- 
ler, I've been watching you a long time. You're alius 
attendin ' to bizness. But a man that kin do what you kin 
ought to have an easier time than you're havin'. Don't 
you need a little extry cash once in a while 1 ' ' 

"A hundred" would stead him for a good investment, 
Burbank presumed. 

The old rancher made it "two hundred!" 

' ' I don 't want no note nor no interest either. When you 
get ready to pay it, all right. ' ' 

This old man unconsciously did himself honor, because 
he recognized as a genius, not only one to whom the United 



i"Let a man do a thing incomparably well and the world will make 
a path to his door, even though he live in a forest." — Emerson. 



LUTHER BUBBANE 295 

States, in order to perpetuate his work, has been proud to 
grant from the Carnegie fund ten thousand dollars a year 
for ten years, but one at the mention of whose name 
European chambers of deputies have risen with uncovered 
heads. 

It was not long before an advertisement appeared in a 
California paper to fill an order for twenty thousand 
prune-trees in nine months. Upon this Burbank at once 
decided to fill the order, and he searched the countryside 
for helpers. With their aid he planted all he could obtain 
of the seeds of the almond, the quickest growing tree. On 
the sprouts he budded twenty thousand prune-buds. In 
nine months these were ready, according to stipulation. 

Soon he had so built up his business that it would mean 
to him an income of ten thousand dollars a year. But to 
be a discoverer of God's new world of plants and flowers 
he threw aside the temptation, amid the usual chorus of 
mercenary fault-finders. 

The place Burbank had chosen for the platform of this 
great undertaking was in the Santa Rosa Valley, about 
fifty miles north of San Francisco. 1 It was in 1878 that he 
purchased the home-place in Santa Rosa, the spot of his 
first experiment and testing- garden. Later he added 
eighteen acres in the Gold Ridge section, near Sebastopol, 
to which he rides twice a week to inspect and select from 
the hundreds of thousands of plants constantly under test. 

The visitor will find just across the street from a new 
home which he has just built, the original cottage, endraped 



iBurbank's mother originally purchased four acres, on which Luther 
started his first nursery. Previous to the coming of their mother to 
California came Burbank 's other brothers and his sister, Emma 
Burbank Beeson, a Massachusetts school teacher. 



296 MASTER MINDS 

with wistaria, ivy, bougainvillgea and passion-vines. It is 
approached by hedge-row walks, and is flanked by flower- 
beds and greenhouses, while at the gate it is guarded by 
stately columns of paradox and royal walnut trees. Here, 
amid Shasta daisies and rose-trees for thirty years, while 
she has been growing the roses in her cheeks and the silver 
in her hair, Burbank has lived with his New England 
mother, who is now past ninety-six years of age. 

They tell me there to-day, as we think of this New Eng- 
land mother, that Burbank had no aid from her New Eng- 
land home during the year of sickness and privation, sim- 
ply because his relatives did not realize his circumstances, 
and because he was too proud to write them. Yet it was by 
only the next fall that he had so mastered circumstances 
that he started a small nursery, carrying on horticultural 
experiments and collecting seeds for eastern and foreign 
seedsmen. The business increased rapidly, although in 1888 
the nursery was sold, notwithstanding the income now 
amounted, as we have said, to ten thousand dollars a year. 
By its sale it was possible to devote the whole time and 
thought to experimental work. 

THE PLANT KING AT WORK 

From this threshold and guard-house enter upon his 
marvelous kingdom of plants, and behold the gardens at 
Santa Rosa. Here Burbank has had over thirty-six hun- 
dred different species under experiment. A brief look 
around reveals many hundreds of species in process of ex- 
periment. 

But first recall the secret of the transformation you are 
to behold. 

There stands Burbank himself, pollinating a flower! 




The Birthplace of Luther Burbank, and His Cottage 
at Santa Rosa, California 



LUTHER BURBANK 297 

Bees, insects and winds are nature 's methods of carrying 
the pollen from one plant to the other, and crossing the two 
to produce a third. Burbank is doing this thing himself, 
and has brushed off the pollen from the stamen of one kind 
of plant's bloom to sprinkle it upon the stigma of another. 

"Practically all evolution and improvement are depend- 
ent upon crossing, followed by selection. ' ' 

This statement is the principle upon which he chiefly 
works. He thus secures in the new product variation from 
the parent plant — a break from its usual course. 

What by natural selection would take nature one hun- 
dred years or more to do, he can do by crossing and selection 
in one or a few years; for crossing, as it were, melts the 
plant's fixed tendencies, and puts it plastically into his 
hands to mould it which way he will. 

The early summer is the busy season when he makes 
countless crossings. In the morning he watches the bees, 
nature's pollen carriers, as they dart from bloom to bloom. 
When the morning is young and when the bees mark that 
nature's clock is pointing to pollination time and flit from 
petal to petal, Burbank at once steals out and gets to work 
also. He dusts the pollen from the stamen of one plant 
and drops it upon the stigma of another. The pollen he 
gathers and places on a watch-glass ready to drop upon the 
waiting stigma of the bloom to be fertilized. That wind or 
insect may not refertilize the receiving plant with further 
pollen, he removes the stamen, cutting away petals, anthers 
and sepal cup, the pistils alone being left. To secure 
crosses he thus treats his plants to the number of hundreds 
of thousands each season. 

When the latent vital forces are set free by this act, he 
plants the seed of the pollinated bloom and secures in the 
new creation a change, "wabble" or perturbation from the 



298 MASTER MINDS 

parent's past, after which, amid the many specimens of the 
new kind, he selects the best and rejects what he does not 
want. 

The result of a cross between different species of plants 
is called a hybrid. Hybridization is breeding together 
members of different species of plants to make new species 
and new varieties. It is as a hybridizer and by an 
astounding ability to select from variations that Burbank 
stands without a peer in the creation of plants and flowers. 

After crossing comes selection. The instinct for selec- 
tion is also Burbank 's by divine right in the kingdom of 
vegetation. At times from as many as five hundred thou- 
sand seedlings springing from seeds gathered from cross- 
bred plants, he selects only a single one as fit to survive. At 
other times scores of thousands offer not one choice. The 
judgment flame of mammoth bonfires lights up his plant- 
gardens many times a year. Here without mercy are con- 
sumed by tens and hundreds of thousands plants that cum- 
ber the ground and are unfit to survive. But let us begin 
with the plants he has redeemed and glorified. 

HE CROWNS THE DAISY 

There are the Shasta daisies — white stars centred with 
sunbursts of yellow; they once were insignificant field- 
daisies, the vagrants of his Worcester County hillsides. To 
get them in New England, he stopped the cars, or waiting 
till the next station, went back to the particularly likely 
specimen he had detected. Once there, he painstakingly 
selected the best of the clump, and taking with him across 
the continent these old home wild-flowers of New England, 
he has raised them to the throne. To its New England 
hardiness, by crossing he brought the Japanese daisy with 



LUTHER BUBBANK 299 

its snowy whiteness. Again by a second cross he enlarged 
it by combination with the European daisy; out of this 
interfused strain, after eight years he evolved the regal 
bloom whose diameter is from five to seven inches across 
the face. To commemorate its new home, from the white 
snow-capped peak of Mt. Shasta, he calls it the Shasta 
daisy. 

The Shasta daisy will grow from the Arctic circle to the 
equator and will remain fresh from two to three weeks. 

To take a tramp-flower like this from the "byways and 
hedges," compel it to come into the kingdom and make 
something of it true and beautiful and good, is with Bur- 
bank a passion and an evangel. It repeats indeed the 
facts of his own life and of his faith that — 

"In the mud and scum of things, 
Something always, always sings." 

For this song of a lost plant prodigal, he always has his 
ear to the ground. 

"Weeds are weeds," he declares, "because they are 
jostled, crowded, cropped, and trampled on, scorched by 
fierce heat, starved, or perhaps suffering with cold, wet 
feet, tormented by insects, pests, or lack of nourishing 
foods and sunshine. There is not a weed alive but what 
will sooner or later respond to good cultivation or persist- 
ent selection. What occupation can be more delightful 
than adopting the most prominent individuals from among 
a race of vile, neglected weeds, with settled hoodlum ten- 
dencies, down-trodden and despised by all, and gradually 
lifting it up by breeding and education to a higher sphere, 
to see it gradually change its sprawling habits, its coarse 
ill-smelling foliage, its insignificant blossoms of dull color, 
to an upright plant with handsome, glossy, fragrant leaves, 



300 MASTERMINDS 

flowers of every hue and with a perfume as pure and lovely 
as could be desired ? ' ' 

HE CREATES PERFUME, TASTE AND COLOR 

To such a plant-redeemer, to perfume scentless or 
ill-smelling plants is an exquisite and delicate service. 

One evening at dusk, when the fragrance hangs upon the 
atmosphere heavier than usual and apparently odorless 
flowers give forth new hints of perfume, Burbank detected, 
while walking in the cool of the day in his garden of ver- 
benas, traces of a faint odor of the mayflower. But to even 
his trained instinct the array of scentless verbenas refused 
to disclose a single one thus gifted. A year passed. But 
the mayflower ghost of the fragrant verbena haunted him a 
twelvemonth. Again one night the next summer the 
arbutus-like whiff of spicy fragrance stole by him as he 
walked at the same hour through his banks of verbenas. 
He at last found the particular flower which alone gave 
forth the scent. Marking it till seed-time he treasured the 
seeds, and as a result of their planting created a race of 
redolent verbenas, heavy with the aroma of the one which 
had in some mysterious way stolen the deliciously sweet 
scent of the trailing arbutus. This type of verbena now 
gives forth the breath of our mayflower with more than 
twice its intensity. 

Coarse, rank-smelling dahlias Burbank has in like way 
baptized with an incense like that of the southern magno- 
lia. 

To the neutral calla lily he has added a distinctive fra- 
grance. 

Color he likewise changes by means of selection and 
crossing, taking nature's pigments and using her paint- 
brush at will. A blue poppy has thus been brought forth 



LUTHER BUBBANK 301 

out of a large quantity of seedling poppies because of a 
faint suggestion of blue in a single one. Its planted seed 
produced a plant somewhat bluer. The process continued 
till now he has one true blue in hue. 

One of the most distinctive of flowers whose color he has 
changed is the California poppy. 

Once, and only once, he espied among the native poppy- 
banks of gold and orange just one with the welt of a crim- 
son artery streaking the gold. 

Its thread of red, where nature had dropped a stitch, 
was so faint that it showed but on one side. But by selec- 
tion through a series of years he has achieved out of only 
this one, to-day's bloom of pure, solid crimson. 1 

"We note how he can change and evolve color and 
odor. But it is so not only with color and odor. He can 
do likewise with flavor. 

Once he found a plum with a faint taste of a Bartlett 
pear. By selection he developed from it plums with more 
of the taste of the Bartlett pear than the pear itself. The 
tastes of many other fruits he has at will changed or added. 

VAST FLORAL ALTARS OF SACRIFICE AND CHARITY 

In uniting two plants to create a third, the hybridized 
lily-bed presents an altar whose incense reaches farthest of 
all the perfumed flower-banks at Santa Rosa. 

"Consider the lilies, how they grow!" — five hundred 
thousand lilies at a single test — one hundred thousand 
blooming at one time with colors running into every hue, 
and here and there a queenly stalk over eight feet high, 
clustered with fifty separate flowers! 



iThe chemistry of color-changes is itself a study; acid soils, for 
instance, tending to produce blue and alkali soils red. 



302 MASTER MINDS 

If such a lily is called an incensed altar, sacrifice makes 
it more so. The lily-plants uprooted and burned in mam- 
moth pyres number hundreds of thousands at a time. Sac- 
rifice, indeed, is Burbank's price of progress. 

Should one start a nature-story in plant-life after the 
habit of our nature-writers of the animal creation, the 
eclipse of plants like the mesembryanthemum would make 
a tragic tale. To obtain this plant the plant king took a 
little insignificant flower, and by selection of several years 
of experiment developed a plant whose beds of bloom 
banked their flowers in royal clusters. But in one night 
some secret enemy accomplished their extermination and 
the new race of mesembryanthemum vanished. 

It has been said of Benjamin Franklin that he con- 
vinced certain doubters of a plaster fertilizer he had 
invented by sprinkling it so that when the grass tufts rose 
richer than the rest, they spelled the letters: "THIS 
GRASS HAS BEEN PLASTERED." 

In a much higher way Burbank spells out in flowers and 
fruit his benevolence and his principles. Originally the 
amaryllis was a hothouse plant, growing for the rich in the 
conservatories of great mansions. Why should not the 
amaryllis, so exceptionally bright in its bank of bloom, 
weep over the graves of the poor and cheer the homes of 
the humble? Its gorgeous facets in each colossal flower 
measure from eight to ten inches across, but he has made 
it possible for the poor to purchase them. Four or five 
bulbs were at first worth six dollars apiece. He has so 
treated the tuber that now there are from forty to fifty 
bulbs to a plant, and has reduced the price of a bulb to a 
few cents, and so placed the lustrous creation within the 
reach of all. 



LUTHER BUBBANE 303 

THE REGAL WALNUTS 

Not merely delicate flower tendrils, but giant trees obey 
Burbank's master hand, let loose their vital fluid and, 
plastic to his touch, grow as quickly as the tiniest flower- 
slip into his re-creations. 

Before his house, we have already recalled, towers a line 
of imperial and monumental walnuts. One kind, the Par- 
adox, from crossing the California black and English wal- 
nut, has reached in only fourteen years a height of sixty 
feet and a diameter of two feet. It is the fastest growing 
tree in the temperate zone. It will grow practically 
throughout the United States. For furniture and cabinet- 
work its wood is exceedingly hard, and polishable to a bril- 
liant lustre unsurpassed in beauty. 

The other, the Royal walnut — this tree's half-brother — 
is a cross of the American and California black walnut. 
The phenomenon of this new creation lies in its nuts, 
doubled in size, and bearing sometimes a thousand pounds 
of nuts per tree. The tannin Mr. Burbank has driven 
from the walnut 's meat, making it a clear, yellowish white. 
Even the leaves of the walnut-tree he has metamorphosed 
till they shed the fragrance of different aromatic plants. 



THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND VARIETIES OF PLUMS 

Among the fruit-trees, the plumcot represents not only 
a variant, but a new species, which Mr. Burbank declares 
he has produced different from any known fruit in the 
world — different also in color, taste and texture from any 
of its ancestors. It is a cross between a Japanese plum and 
the apricot. This species of tree never before pronged 



304 M ASTER MINDS 

its roots into the earth till created some six years ago. The 
color of its fruit's pulpy flesh is white, crimson or yellow, 
and its delicious flavors equally vary. 

The stoneless, though not necessarily seedless, plum comes 
from Mr. Burbank 's having read of a partially pitless wild 
plum grown in France two hundred years ago. Searching 
till he found its surviving representative, he has produced 
a plum, from which by crossing the stone has disappeared. 
To get a plum that would grow in sandy wastes, Mr. Bur- 
bank first selected as one parent the wilding that sinks its 
long roots into the beaches and rocky banks of eastern 
states, going far down for moisture. 

Plums present to Burbank an especially inviting field of 
discovery. Seedling-plums he grafts to the stock of mature, 
vigorous trees, sometimes as many as six hundred in a 
single tree. Thus, instead of waiting six or eight years, in 
one or two years he obtains both flower and fruit. Graft- 
ing is the way in which he makes all fruit mature after 
pollination in two or three seasons, in place of waiting five 
or six times as long for the individual itself to mature. 

As each matured tree-stock is grafted to contain from 
one to five hundred kinds, more than three hundred thou- 
sand varieties of plums are now, after twenty-five years' 
crossing, under experiment at once. Upon his experiment- 
grounds, already made famous for the world's use, are the 
America, Chalco, Climax, October Purple, Wickson, Apple, 
Gold, and many others. 

Another new species of fruit Burbank has produced by 
crossing the western dewberry and the Siberian raspberry. 
The Primus berry, he declares, results — a new and hither- 
to non-existent species of fruit unknown to the world 
before. It ripens its main crop before the standard black- 
berries and raspberries begin to bloom. This for general 



LUTHER B URBANE 305 

culture is not yet recommended, as further improvement 
will be made. 

Crossing the California dewberry and the California 
raspberry results in another berry which Mr. Burbank also 
ranks as absolutely new to the world. He calls it the 
Phenomenal berry. It is larger than the largest ever 
known, and of an exquisite, sub-acid flavor. 

He has also just domesticated the blueberry into a new 
species — the wonderberry. 

Where success does come, nowhere does it appear without 
cost. A white blackberry, the "iceberg," to be produced 
required in the evolution of the desired plant the raising 
and destruction of sixty-five thousand bushes. There have 
been times in these experiments indeed when nine hundred 
thousand berry-bushes have been destroyed in a single 
season. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE DETHORNED PLANT 

Dethorning plants of spicules and thorns has developed 
from tiny triumphs to Burbank 's greatest work of all. 

The cross of the raspberry and the strawberry once pro- 
duced flowers, but no fruit — only thornless canes. Thorn- 
less roses, blackberries and gooseberries likewise have been 
evolved by crossing and elimination. 

In the raspberry-strawberry, thornlessness may have 
meant nothing. In roses, raspberries and blackberries it 
may mean something more. But there is one creation 
where it means everything. It is the thornless cactus. 

Of all dethorned plants the thornless cactus is the real 
gigantic achievement known to Burbank 's genius. As has 
been noted, an area of over a thousand million acres — larger 
an area by far than the United States — is rendered useless 
on this globe through its being arid, parched desert, unpop- 
20 



306 MASTER MINDS 

ulated save by the bones of men and beasts, by sand and 
by barbed and deadly cactus. Where all else is scorched 
to death, it remains that the cactus succeeds in 
growing and surviving. But it is worse than useless, as 
the hardiest sheep that are allowed to roam suffer torture 
and die cruel deaths from the piercing thorns and spicules 
that the cactus lodges in their intestines and eyeballs. 

Out of nearly one thousand varieties for which Burbank 
searched over all the Saharas of the globe, he has found 
a few specimens nearly thornless. Could he breed into 
them properties that would create a thornless cactus, he 
tfould begin to change this tremendous desert area into 
rich and productive land, teeming with food for man and 
beast. It was a mighty imaginative sweep of vision, than 
which Burbank has never had a greater. It was a vision 
almost akin to Isaiah's, where we read in the thirty-fifth 
chapter of the Major Prophet: 

' ' The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for 
them ; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. 
It shall bloom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and 
singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the 
excellency of Carmel and Sharon. For in the wilderness 
shall waters break out and streams in the desert. And the 
glowing sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground 
springs of water, in the habitations of jackals, where each 
lay shall be grass with reeds and rushes." 

The result of the study of nearly a thousand species and 
varieties of cactus from all the world's deserts 
resulted, we have already said, in the discovery of several 
partially thornless varieties. Seeds from each were 
planted. When flowers came, Burbank made thousands of 
crossings by pollination. For fifteen years the plant- 
prophet silently worked, watched and waited. Tens of 




The Cactus — Before and After 

Above is the original thorny kind of seedling cacti, with but two or three dethorned. 

Below arc three-year-old cactus plants, free from thorns, with their second crop 

of fruit, one-third grown, but when ripe three inches long, two inches in 

diameter, smooth, delicious, and of many colors and flavors. The giant 

cacti are from eight to twenty feet high, and weigh nearly a ton 



LUTHER B URBANE 307 

thousands showed no improvement. They were as thorny 
as ever. A few less barbed with spicules and thorns he sep- 
arated. This process being followed out year after year, 
to-day the result is a number of giant cacti, many of which 
grow from eight to twenty feet high and weigh at the 
maximum a ton or more each, with no thorns, prickers, or 
spicules. Its pulpy leaves are from five to ten inches wide, 
two feet long, and often two inches in thickness. They 
will furnish good fodder for cattle and sheep, whose eye- 
balls and intestines will no longer be pierced as they munch 
the luscious nourishment. These thornless cacti present in 
their broad, smooth, slab-like leaves on an average six hun- 
dred pounds to one plant, about one-half as nutritious as 
ordinary pasture grasses. For human consumption they 
produce great quantities of yellow, white and orange- 
colored fruits, usually three and one-half inches in length 
and two inches in diameter, in shape like a banana or a 
cucumber, its meat flavored like the peach, the melon, the 
pineapple or the blackberry. Of forage they can produce 
two hundred tons to an acre. In comparison with the 
twenty tons produced by coarse vegetables like beets, car- 
rots, turnips or cabbage, they thus offer the tremendous 
proportionate increase of two hundred to twenty. Based 
on fact, therefore, is Burbank's prophecy that were the 
population of the globe increased one-third, there could, 
together with what is already produced, be grown from 
this desert plant "food enough for all." 

It is not a mental mirage of the desert. The cactus' 
value is already highly appreciated and its use has 
extended to every continent. Orders are constantly arriv- 
ing from the deserts on other sides of the globe. From the 
sale of the first five leaves to an Australian firm was built 
the beautiful new home which Mr. Burbank now occupies. 



308 MASTER MINDS 

Kingliest of all Burbank's colossal creations is this plant, 
whose leaves shall be for the ' ' healing of the nations. ' ' 



BURBANK FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENCE 

Exaggeration is not needed in presenting the work of 
Burbank. To the plant-creator it is intensely distasteful — 
even painful. He would have no one think that he is the 
sole discoverer of his process. In qualifying some state- 
ment in this sketch, Burbank's sister, Mrs. Emma 
Burbank Beeson, with whom he overlooked this chapter, 
stopped to say : ' ' Truth is a passion with my brother. He 
desires nothing so much as the truth. ' ' 

From Pliny's day, when the Latin writer recorded new 
fruits produced by grafting, to men like Mr. Burbank's 
own grandfather before him, not only have gardeners 
grafted, budded and evolved better plants and fruit- 
trees, but scientific gardeners and horticulturists before and 
since, down even to the present habit of hybridizing, have 
also crossed two plants to grow a third. 

Mr. Burbank has not discovered the method of crossing, 
as neither did he discover hybridizing, which is crossing 
two distinctly different species to produce a new. He was 
the first to discern and make use of the fact that the great 
variations occur in the second and third generations from 
the crossing. A journalism prone to exaggeration, and a 
mercurial reading public jumping at conclusion, in their 
ignorance assume Burbank as the discoverer of the methods 
of crossing and hybridizing. This is a fiction which Mr. 
Burbank is the first to disclaim. But granting all this, it 
does not subtract from achievements which outstrip any- 
thing hitherto known, and rank Burbank in the sense of 



LUTHER BUBBANK 309 

being a ' ' doer of the word, ' ' the greatest scientific 
re-creator of plants and flowers the world has known. 1 

Hugo De Vries, the world's greatest botanist, by no 
means agrees in all points with Mr. Burbank, but is at odds 
with him over certain scientific deductions. Therefore he 
is all the better as authority. It is he who has declared : 

' ' Mr. Burbank is doubtless the most skillful promoter in 
the formation of new forms of plant-life by the process of 
crossing and selection." 2 He is "a great and unique 
genius. Such knowledge of nature and such ability to 
handle plant-life would be possible only to one possessing 
genius of a high order. Burbank is the man who creates 
unique novelties in horticulture, a work which every man 
cannot do. It requires a great genius. It is rightly pre- 
sumed that no possible improvements are beyond his reach." 3 



1" There are a few men in the United States in whom there is an 
intense interest because of their achievements. The most prominent 
of these are Booker T. Washington, Jacob Riis, Benjamin B. Lind- 
sey and Luther Burbank, and in some respects the interest in Mr. 
Burbank is the keenest. His triumphs are more tangible, because 
they represent unquestioned power, almost miraculous power, over 
nature. Mr. Burbank has created more important new fruits, 
flowers, berries, etc., than any one else, and he has done most of 
it, defying all hitherto accepted theories of plant creation." — Bos- 
ton Journal of Education. 

2S0 great is the Carnegie Institute's regard that it not only grants 
him ten thousand dollars a year, but has its representative, Dr. 
Shull, constantly searching on Burbank 's grounds the records of 
transformations, recording them for science and mankind. The 
time will come when for the sake of science and humanity as a 
result of Dr. Shull 's observing, the Carnegie Institution will issue 
his results in many volumes, the preparation of which is now 
going on. 

sThe President of the Carnegie Institute at Washington in his 
report of 1906 adds these words: "The President desires to record 



310 MASTER MINDS 

Certain scientific deductions Mr. Burbank has, through 
his matchless experimentation, naturally questioned. First 
we may mention the law of "mutation." In the verdict of 
the world's premier botanist, De Vries, mutation occurs at 
only periodic times in a plant's history. Burbank 's muta- 
tions (or elemental changes) De Vries declares but 
"sports," i. e., a reverberation to some ancestral trait 
latent in the organism. 

"No," answered Burbank; "a thousand new variations 
and mutations occur by cross-breeding." 

Another difference is as to what constitutes inheritance 
in plants. Burbank claims acquired characters are inher- 
ited, while De Vries claims species take origin by muta- 
tion. Burbank 's stand is that he has disproved De Vries' 
theory that acquired characters are never transmitted, and 
has proved that acquired characters are the only ones that 
are transmitted. All this is in harmony with the Burbank 
main conclusion that "inheritance is the sum of all past 
environment. ' ' 

As the difference between the two men is largely one of 
definition, the lay reader as well as the student will rest his 
verdict with the man who has the largest experimental 
observation. This, of course, is Burbank, who has had mil- 
lions of variant plants under observation, while the other 
has but a few score. 

In addition to his incomparably greater field of observa- 
tion, another quality is universally granted Burbank by 
scientists , namely, his peerless eye for detecting variations, 
an instinctive gift no study can create. 



his warm esteem of the scientific spirit of co-operation shown in 
this enterprise by Mr. Burbank, by the members of the committee, 
by Dr. Shull, and by numerous colleagues whose counsel has been 
sought." 



LUTHER BUBBANE 311 

He applies this initiative insight to other scientific con- 
clusions. For instance, the Mendelian laws have calculated 
that a certain and fixed proportion of characters descends to 
the evolved plant from each respective parent. He 
declares these Mendelian laws only partially explain the 
changes resulting from almost countless experiments where 
"for years," as David Starr Jordan has lately declared, 
"Burbank has kept a hundred thousand different experi- 
ments going, more than all the scientific laborers in the 
world. ' ' 

As the plant-creator goes to the woods without a gun, he 
goes to the flowers without a book. Naturally he breaks 
asunder the bonds of old terminologies and has to create 
new terms, even constantly having to coin words for hith- 
erto unknown creations every week. For laws as well as 
terms he is no more bound to the book and bell of a De 
Vries than he is to those of a Linnaeus. No book has ever 
been written to enchart his new discoveries of laws ; and no 
book has anticipated them. 

Columbus' discovery of the new world no book antici- 
pated. So no book anticipates Burbank's explorations. 
He is discovering a new plant-world hitherto uncharted 
and unformulated. 

His chief book is nature, which he reads at first hand 
without a mediator. 

"You're wrong, De Vries," he once burst forth at an 
unhappy moment when the world's greatest botanist once 
questioned nature. "You are wrong. Nature never 
lies!" 

A PROPHET OF THE PLANT WORLD 

Such a man has a prophet's originality and creativeness. 
It is first proof of Burbank's genius that he is not a priest 



312 MASTER MINDS 

of nature, thumbing over Latin classifications. It is first 
proof of his genius that he is not a straight-laced defender 
of the faith, telling over the worn beads of botanical rosa- 
ries and repeating academic credos in the foot-trodden 
cathedral of dead botanists. He is the plant-prophet of 
God's world to-day. 

' ' The chief work of botanists of yesterday, ' ' he declared, 
"was the study and classification of dried, shriveled plants, 
plant-mummies whose souls had fled, rather than the living, 
plastic forms. They thought their classified species were 
more fixed and unchangeable than anything in heaven or 
earth one can imagine. We have learned that they were 
as plastic in our hands as clay in the hands of the potter, 
or color on the artist's canvas. In pursuing the study of 
any of the universal and everlasting laws of nature, pre- 
conceived notions, dogmas and all personal prejudices must 
be laid aside and, listening patiently, quietly, reverently 
to the lessons, one by one, which Mother Nature has to 
teach, shedding light on that which was before a mystery, 
all who will may see and know. She conveys her 
truth only to those who are passive and receptive, accepting 
truths as suggested, wherever they may be had ; then at last 
man has a solid foundation for science. ' ' 



BURBANK THE WHOLE-SOULED MAN 

Such a mind, acquainted with but unfettered by books, 
we may naturally expect to overleap the barriers of not 
only other fences, but the barriers of his own field. "We 
may expect him to look into other fields of progress, to 
which he will apply universal laws that, though learned in 
his own, are equally true for all. 



LUTHER BUBBANK 313 

So through not only physical nature, but through human 
nature, up to nature's God, Burbank goes till he halts only 
before the Universal and the Infinite, at what he calls ' ' the 
fringe of the ocean of force." 

"My theories," he concludes, "of the laws and princi- 
ples of plant-creation in many respects are opposed to the 
theories of materialists. I am a firm believer in a higher 
power than man's. All my investigations have led me 
away from the idea of a dead, material universe tossed 
about by variant forces to those of a universe absolutely 
all force, life, soul, thought, or whatever name we may 
choose to call it." 

"I believe emphatically in religion. God made religion 
and man made theology, just as God made the country and 
man made the town. I have the largest sympathy for reli- 
gion." 1 

To him "the social and spiritual import," his sister, Mrs. 
Beeson, declares to us, "is far greater than the practical 
and economic. " "A day will come, ' ' he prophesies, ' ' when 
man shall offer his brother man, not bullets nor bayonets, 
but richer grasses, better fruits, fairer flowers." 

"the training of the human plant " 

"If such work can be wrought with plants," he 
declares, ' ' what may not be done with man, the most sensi- 
tive of all to his environment." 2 America's greatest ques- 
tion of immigration and child-life therefore concerns him 
primarily. It is his working idea, gained from plant laws, 
that "on the crossing of species wisely directed and accom- 



i"The Training of the Human Plant," p. 28. 
Ubid. 



314 MASTER MINDS 

panied by a rigid selection of the best, and a rigid exclu- 
sion of the poorest, rests the hope of all progress. ' ' 

"In it," he adds, "we face the opportunity of the 
United States of observing and aiding, in what is the 
grandest opportunity ever presented of developing the 
finest race the world has ever known, out of the vast min- 
gling of races brought here by immigration." Fifty dis- 
tinct nationalities he traces, and in the blending of these 
he finds our weal or woe. ' ' Just as the plant-breeder always 
notices sudden changes and breaks, as well as many minor 
modifications, when he joins two or more plants of diverse 
type from widely separate quarters of the globe, some- 
times merging an absolutely wild strain with one that, long 
over-civilized, has largely lost virility, and just as he finds 
among the descendants a plant that is likely to be stronger 
and better than either ancestor, so may we notice constant 
changes and breaks and modifications going on about us in 
this vast combination of races, and so we may hope for a 
far stronger and better race, if right principles are fol- 
lowed — a magnificent race far superior to any preceding it. ' ' 
"The hardiness of the north" can be blended with "the 
rich emotionalism of the south." The staid and phleg- 
matic he points to as combinable with the quick-tempered 
and hot-blooded, and the mentally equipped with the bodily 
vigorous. The one needs the other. 

As to the place to begin, he starts, as with a plant, with 
the plastic embryo and with the child. "Nothing else is 
doing so much to break down the nervous systems of Amer- 
icans, not even the rush of maturer years, as this over- 
crowding and cramming of child-life before ten. With the 
nervous system shattered, what is life worth? Suppose 
you began the education, so called, of your child at three or 
four. If he be unusually bright in the kindergarten, keep 



LUTHER BUR BANK 315 

on, and push him to the uttermost. Outraged nature may 
be left to take care of the rest. ' ' 

The plastic child can be changed not only by proper 
intermarriage, but by environment, because even inheri- 
tance itself is the ' ' sum of all past environment. ' ' 

He indicts as the present default of our educational sys- 
tem oi>er-education of mind and under-edncsdion of body 
and conscience. ' ' The work of breaking down the nervous 
system of the children of the United States is now well 
under way. We stuff them, cram them, and overwork 
them until their little brains are crowded up to and by the 
danger-line. Seldom is substantial progress made by one 
whose individuality has been stifled in the schools. ' ' 

In place of forcing studies upon the mind before it is 
ripe, he first demands "a close touch with nature, a bare- 
foot boy, with all that it implies, for physical stamina. ' ' 

"Of all living things," he concludes, "the child is the 
most sensitive. A child absorbs environment. It is the 
most susceptible thing in the world to influence." "I 
wish to lay special stress upon the absurdity of running 
children through the same mill in a lot, with absolutely no 
real reference to their individuality. No two children are 
alike; you cannot expect them to develop alike. It is when 
one breaks away absolutely from all precedent and rule, 
and carves out a new place in the world, that any substan- 
tial progress is ever made, and seldom is this done by those 
whose individuality has been stifled in the schools." 

By this he does not mean to neglect the child, or leave it 
to itself. "Bear in mind that this child life, in these first 
ten years, is the most sensitive thing in the world; never 
lose sight of that. Children respond to ten thousand subtle 
influences which would have no more influence upon a 



316 MASTER MINDS 

plant than they would upon the sphinx. Vastly more sen- 
sitive is it than the most sensitive plant. ' ' 

Here is the time best possible, he insists, to ingrain hon- 
esty. "The voice of public dishonesty, which seems to be 
sweeping over this country, is chiefly due to a lack of 
proper training — breeding, if you will, in the formative 
years of life." 

Here also is the time to inculcate purity. ' ' The child is 
the purest thing in the world. It is absolute truth; that's 
why we love children. Here in the child, too, is the place 
to ingrain purity in the race. Its life is stainless, open to 
receive all infusions, just as is the life in the plant, and far 
more pliant and responsive to influences, and to influences 
to which no plant is capable of being responsive. Upon 
the child before the age of ten, we have an unparalleled 
opportunity to work ; for nowhere else is there material so 
plastic. The atmosphere must be pure around it. It must 
be free from every kind of indelicacy or coarseness. The 
most dangerous man in the community is the one who 
would pollute the stream of a child's life. Whoever was 
responsible for saying that ' boys will be boys, ' and a young 
man 'must sow his wild oats,' was perhaps guilty of a 
crime. ' ' 

In accomplishing all this, the state must take the upper 
hand, Burbank demands, and as the result is above all else 
the salvation or overturning of the state, the state must 
make the child a matter of law. 

"Especially," he continues, "must this be true of the 
children of the poor, and these unfortunate waifs and 
foundlings. ' ' 

1 ' Cut loose from all precedent, and begin systematic State 
and National aid ; not next year, or a decade from now, but 
to-day. Begin training these outcasts, begin the cultiva- 



LUTHER BUBBANE 317 

tion of them, if you will, much as we cultivate the 
plants. ' ' 

"How many plants are there in the world to-day that 
were not in a sense once abnormalities? No, it is the 
influence of cultivation, of selection, of surroundings, of 
environments, that makes the change from the abnormal to 
the normal. From the children that we are led to call 
abnormal may come, under wise cultivation and training, 
splendid normal natures." 

Vicious or defective tendencies can be outbred from 
plants, he demonstrates, in from six to ten generations, and 
by the repetition of treatment, the new habits ensue. ' ' So 
can it be with the races, through the training of a child. 
Only it will be immeasurably easier to produce and fix any 
desired traits in the child than in the plant." "For the 
most stubborn living thing in this world, the most difficult 
to swerve, is a plant once fixed in certain habits, habits 
which have been growing stronger and stronger upon it by 
repetition through thousands and thousands of years. The 
human will is a weak thing beside the will of a plant. But 
see how this whole plant's life-long stubbornness is broken 
swiftly by blending a new life with it, making, by crossing, 
a complete change in its life." 

"With such traits and purposes emerges Burbank, the 
Man, having considered "the lily, how it grows," only like 
the Great Exemplar, to direct his vision to mankind. 
Horticultural science, great as it is, has been to him but a 
ladder whose rounds have advanced his soul to an ascend- 
ancy where not vegetation but Being is supreme. 

"Poet, whose words are like the tight -packed seed 

Sealed in the capsule of a silver flower, 
Still at your art we wonder as we read 

The art dynamic charging each word with power 1" 



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